which he was cutting a
rather ludicrous and lumbering figure.

But he had that enterprise and lack of modesty which has lately become
the fashion among young lawyers--and is spreading fast among the old
ones, too--which carried him into places and cases where simply learning
would have left him without a brief. If a case did not come to Lawyer
Hammer, Lawyer Hammer went to the case, laid hold of it by force, and
took possession of it as a kidnaper carries off a child.

Hammer was a forerunner of the type of lawyer so common in our centers
of population today, such as one sees chasing ambulances through the
streets with a business-card in one hand and a contract in the other;
such as arrives at the scene of wreck, fire, and accident along with the
undertaker, and always ahead of the doctors and police.

Hammer had his nose in the wind the minute that Constable Frost came
into town with his prisoner. Before Joe had been in jail an hour he had
engaged himself to defend that unsophisticated youngster, and had drawn
from him an order on Mrs. Newbolt for twenty-five dollars. He had
demanded fifty as his retainer, but Joe knew that his mother had but
twenty-five dollars saved out of his wages, and no more. He would not
budge a cent beyond that amount.

So, as Mrs. Newbolt and Colonel Price approached the jail that morning,
they beheld the sheriff and Lawyer Hammer coming down the steps of the
county prison, and between them Joe, like _Eugene Aram_, "with gyves
upon his wrists." The sheriff was taking Joe out to arraign him before
the circuit judge to plead to the indictment.

The court convened in that same building where all the county's business
was centered, and there was no necessity for taking the prisoner out
through one door and in at another, for there was a passage from cells
to court-rooms. But if he had taken Joe that way, the sheriff would have
lost a seldom-presented opportunity of showing himself on the streets in
charge of a prisoner accused of homicide, to say nothing of the grand
opening for the use of his ancient wrist-irons.

Lawyer Hammer also enjoyed his distinction in that short march. He
leaned over and whispered in his client's ear, so that there would be no
doubt left in the public understanding of his relations to the prisoner,
and he took Joe's arm and added his physical support to his legal as
they descended the steps.

Mrs. Newbolt was painfully shocked by the sight of the irons on Joe's
w