Green, taking the side of the landlord,
and speaking with more gravity than before.

"Hardly an accident," was replied.

"He didn't throw at the girl."

"No matter. He threw a heavy tumbler at her father's head. The
intention was to do an injury; and the law will not stop to make any
nice discriminations in regard to the individual upon whom the injury
was wrought. Moreover, who is prepared to say that he didn't aim at the
girl?"

"Any man who intimates such a thing is a cursed liar!" exclaimed the
landlord, half maddened by the suggestion.

"I won't throw a tumbler at your head," coolly remarked the individual
whose plain speaking had so irritated Simon Slade, "Throwing tumblers I
never thought a very creditable kind of argument--though with some men,
when cornered, it is a favorite mode of settling a question. Now, as
for our friend the landlord, I am sorry to say that his new business
doesn't seem to have improved his manners or his temper a great deal.
As a miller, he was one of the best-tempered men in the world, and
wouldn't have harmed a kitten. But, now, he can swear, and bluster, and
throw glasses at people's heads, and all that sort of thing, with the
best of brawling rowdies. I'm afraid he's taking lessons in a bad
school--I am."

"I don't think you have any right to insult a man in his own house,"
answered Slade, in a voice dropped to a lower key than the one in which
he had before spoken.

"I had no intention to insult you," said the other. "I was only
speaking supposititiously, and in view of your position on a trial for
manslaughter, when I suggested that no one could prove, or say that you
didn't mean to strike little Mary, when you threw the tumbler."

"Well, I didn't mean to strike her: and I don't believe there is a man
in this bar-room who thinks that I did--not one."

"I'm sure I do not," said the individual with whom he was in
controversy. "Nor I"--"Nor I" went round the room.

"But, as I wished to set forth," was continued, "the case will not be
so plain a one when it finds its way into court, and twelve men, to
each of whom you may be a stranger, come to sit in judgment upon the
act. The slightest twist in the evidence, the prepossessions of a
witness, or the bad tact of the prosecution, may cause things to look
so dark on your side as to leave you but little chance. For my part, if
the child should die, I think your chances for a term in the state's
prison are as eight to ten; and I