put upon honest men and useful citizens, and let the court
frown, and ponder and consider; for that is what courts are for, but
what do we care for it all? We have left it all behind, with the
ragged programmes in the seats. So if the honourable court, in the
person of the more or less honourable Elijah Westlake Bemis, after the
fashion of federal judges desiring to do a questionable thing, calls
in a judge from a neighbouring court--what do we care? And if the
judge of the neighbouring court, after much legal hemming and judicial
hawing, decides in his great wisdom--that the said defendant Barclay
has been charged in the indictment with no crime, and instructs the
jury to find a verdict of not guilty for said defendant John Barclay,
upon the mere reading of the indictment,--what are the odds? What do
we care if the men in the packed courtroom hiss and the reporters put
down the hisses in their note-books and editors write the hisses in
headlines, and presses print the hisses all over the world? For the
fidgety little man is free now--entirely free save for fifty-four
years of selfish life upon his shoulders.

In the trial of nearly every cause it becomes necessary at some point
in the proceedings to halt the narrative and introduce certain
exhibits, records, and documents, upon which foregone evidence has
been based, and to which coming testimony may properly be attached.
That point has been reached in the case now before the reader. And as
"Exhibit A" let us submit a letter written by John Barclay, January
seventh, nineteen hundred and four, to Jane, his wife, at Naples.

"As I cabled you this afternoon, the case resulted exactly as I said
it would the day after the indictment. I had not seen or talked with
Lige since that day I talked with him over the telephone, before the
indictment was made public, but I knew Lige well enough to know how
he would act under fire. I had him out to dinner this evening, and
we talked over old times, and he tells me he wants to retire from
the bench. Jane, Lige has been my mainstay ever since this company
was organized. Sometimes I feel that without his help in
politics--looking to see that pernicious legislation was killed, and
that the right men were elected to administrative offices, and
appointed to certain judicial places--we never would have been able
to get the company to its present high standing. I feel that he has
been so v