cer. "Are you an
idiot?"

"Fresh baked. I'm deefe. I don't hear a word you say."

The man was discharged. "He wouldn't have made a bad juror, though,"
whispered Braham. "I saw him looking at the prisoner sympathizingly.
That's a point you want to watch for."

The result of the whole day's work was the selection of only two jurors.
These however were satisfactory to Mr. Braham. He had kept off all those
he did not know. No one knew better than this great criminal lawyer that
the battle was fought on the selection of the jury. The subsequent
examination of witnesses, the eloquence expended on the jury are all for
effect outside. At least that is the theory of Mr. Braham. But human
nature is a queer thing, he admits; sometimes jurors are unaccountably
swayed, be as careful as you can in choosing them.

It was four weary days before this jury was made up, but when it was
finally complete, it did great credit to the counsel for the defence.
So far as Mr. Braham knew, only two could read, one of whom was the
foreman, Mr. Braham's friend, the showy contractor. Low foreheads and
heavy faces they all had; some had a look of animal cunning, while the
most were only stupid. The entire panel formed that boasted heritage
commonly described as the "bulwark of our liberties."

The District Attorney, Mr. McFlinn, opened the case for the state. He
spoke with only the slightest accent, one that had been inherited but not
cultivated. He contented himself with a brief statement of the case.
The state would prove that Laura Hawkins, the prisoner at the bar, a
fiend in the form of a beautiful woman, shot dead George Selby, a
Southern gentleman, at the time and place described. That the murder
was in cold blood, deliberate and without provocation; that it had been
long premeditated and threatened; that she had followed the deceased from
Washington to commit it. All this would be proved by unimpeachable
witnesses. The attorney added that the duty of the jury, however painful
it might be, would be plain and simple. They were citizens, husbands,
perhaps fathers. They knew how insecure life had become in the
metropolis. Tomorrow our own wives might be widows, their own children
orphans, like the bereaved family in yonder hotel, deprived of husband
and father by the jealous hand of some murderous female. The attorney
sat down, and the clerk called?

"Henry Brierly."

CHAPTER LV.

Henry Brierly took the stand. R