, were on their feet at
once. Steger and Cowperwood, together with Shannon and Strobik, who
had now come in and was standing as the representative of the State of
Pennsylvania--the complainant--had seated themselves at the long table
inside the railing which inclosed the space before the judge's desk.
Steger proposed to Judge Payderson, for effect's sake more than anything
else, that this indictment be quashed, but was overruled.

A jury to try the case was now quickly impaneled--twelve men out of
the usual list called to serve for the month--and was then ready to be
challenged by the opposing counsel. The business of impaneling a
jury was a rather simple thing so far as this court was concerned. It
consisted in the mandarin-like clerk taking the names of all the jurors
called to serve in this court for the month--some fifty in all--and
putting them, each written on a separate slip of paper, in a whirling
drum, spinning it around a few times, and then lifting out the first
slip which his hand encountered, thus glorifying chance and settling on
who should be juror No. 1. His hand reaching in twelve times drew out
the names of the twelve jurymen, who as their names were called, were
ordered to take their places in the jury-box.

Cowperwood observed this proceeding with a great deal of interest. What
could be more important than the men who were going to try him? The
process was too swift for accurate judgment, but he received a faint
impression of middle-class men. One man in particular, however, an
old man of sixty-five, with iron-gray hair and beard, shaggy eyebrows,
sallow complexion, and stooped shoulders, struck him as having that
kindness of temperament and breadth of experience which might under
certain circumstances be argumentatively swayed in his favor. Another,
a small, sharp-nosed, sharp-chinned commercial man of some kind, he
immediately disliked.

"I hope I don't have to have that man on my jury," he said to Steger,
quietly.

"You don't," replied Steger. "I'll challenge him. We have the right
to fifteen peremptory challenges on a case like this, and so has the
prosecution."

When the jury-box was finally full, the two lawyers waited for the clerk
to bring them the small board upon which slips of paper bearing the
names of the twelve jurors were fastened in rows in order of their
selection--jurors one, two, and three being in the first row; four,
five, and six in the second, and so on. It being the prer