old pal like this to egg you on, he
thought, there actually was some fun left. So he handed her out, and
told Denny to wait for them, and they skirted the high board fence to
the gap in the back. Madame Beattie, holding up her long dress in one
hand and tripping quite nimbly, was clinging to his arm. By the gap they
halted for her to recover breath; she drew her hand from Jeff's arm,
opened her little bag, took out a bit of powder paper and mechanically
rubbed her face. Jeff looked on indulgently. He knew she did not expect
to need an enhanced complexion in this obscurity. The act refreshed her,
that was all.

Weedon, it was easy to note, was battering down tradition.

"They talk about their laws," he shrilled. "I am a lawyer, and I tell
you it breaks my heart every time I go back to worm-eaten precedent. But
I have to do it, because, if I didn't talk that language the judges
wouldn't understand me. Do you know what precedent is? It is the opinion
of some man a hundred years ago on a case tried a hundred years ago. Do
we want that kind of an opinion? No. We want our own opinions on cases
that are tried to-day."

The warm rapid voice of the interpreter came in here, and Madame
Beattie, who was standing apart from Jeffrey, touched his arm. He bent
to listen.

"The man's a fool," said she.

"No," said Jeffrey, "he's not a fool. He knows mighty well what he's
saying and how it'll take."

"If I had all the lawbooks in the world," said Weedon, "I'd pile them up
here on this ground we've made free ground because we have free speech
on it, and I'd touch a match to them, and by the light they made we'd
sit down here and frame our own laws. And they would be laws for the
rich as well as the poor. Columbus did one good thing for us. He
discovered a new world. The capitalists have done their best to spoil
it, and turn it into a world as rotten as the old ones. But Columbus
showed us you can find a new world if you try. And we're going to have a
new world out of this one yet. New laws, new laws, I tell you, new
laws!"

He screamed it at the end, this passion for new laws, and the
interpreter, though he had too just an instinct to take so high a key,
followed him with an able crescendo. Weedie thought he had his audience
in hand, though it was the interpreter who really had it, and he
ventured another stroke:

"I don't want them to tell me what some man taught in Bible days. I want
to know what a man thinks right here in