truth, I am a
hundred dollars the poorer for the case, and shall have to cut off
a few expenses for the rest of the year. I tell you this, because
I know you will not think for a moment that I grudge the money,
and you are not to spoil my trifling self-denial by any offer of
assistance You did quite enough in taking in those two little
imps. Were they very bad? Did they tramp on your flowers, and
frighten poor old Russet [Russet was the cat] out of his fast
waning lives? It was a great pleasure to me to see them so plump
and brown, and I thank you for it. Their testimony in court was
really amusing, though at the same time pathetic. People tell me
that my speech was a good one. What is more surprising, they tell
me that I made the prisoner, and Mr. Bohlmann, the brewer, who sat
next to Dummer, both cry. I confess I grieve over the fact that I
was not prosecuting Bohlmann. He is the real criminal, yet goes
scot free. But the moral effect is, I suppose, the important
thing, and any one to whom responsibility could be traced (and
convicted) gives us that. I find that Mr. Bohlmann goes to the
same church I attend!"

His mother was not surprised. She had always known her Peter was a hero,
and needed no "York papers" to teach her the fact. Still she read every
line of the case, and of the subsequent crusade. She read Peter's speech
again and again, stopping to sob at intervals, and hugging the clipping
to her bosom from time to time, as the best equivalent for Peter, while
sobbing: "My boy, my darling boy." Every one in the mill-town knew of
it, and the clippings were passed round among Peter's friends, beginning
with the clergyman and ending with his school-boy companions. They all
wondered why Peter had spoken so briefly. "If I could talk like that,"
said a lawyer to the proud mother, "I'd have spoken for a couple of
hours." Mrs. Stirling herself wished it had been longer. Four columns of
evidence, and only a little over a half column of speech! It couldn't
have taken him twenty minutes at the most. "Even the other lawyer, who
had nothing to say but lies, took over a column to his speech. And his
was printed close together, while that of Peter's was spread out (_e.g._
solid and leaded) making the difference in length all the greater." Mrs.
Stirling wondered if there could be a conspiracy against her Peter, on
the part of the Metropolitan press. She had