fellow criminal who was interested in securing Parker's release. In
due course she took this supposed friend into her confidence, made a
complete confession, and illustrated her skill by impromptu copies of
her forgeries from memory upon a sheet of pad paper. This the detective
secured and then arrested her. She was indicted for forging the name
Alice Kauser to a check upon the Lincoln National Bank. On her trial
she denied having done so, and claimed that the detective had found the
sheet containing her supposed handwriting in her husband's desk, and
that she had written none of the alleged copies upon it. The door of the
courtroom then opened, and James Parker was led to the bar and pleaded
guilty to the forgery of the check in question. (For the benefit of the
layman it should be explained that as a rule indictments for forgery
also contain a count for "uttering.") He then took the stand, admitted
that he had not only uttered but had also written the check, and swore
that it was his handwriting which, appeared on the pad.

The prosecutor was nonplussed. If he should ask the witness to prove
his capacity to forge such a check from memory on the witness-stand, the
latter, as he had ample time to practise the signature while in prison,
would probably succeed in doing so. If, on the other hand, he should not
ask him to write the name, the defendant's counsel would argue to the
jury that he was afraid to do so. The district attorney therefore took
the bull by the horns and challenged Parker to make from memory a copy
of the signature, and, much as he had suspected, the witness produced
a very good one. An acquittal seemed certain, and the prosecutor was
at his wit's end to devise a means to meet this practical demonstration
that the husband was in fact the forger. At last it was suggested to him
that it would be comparatively easy to memorize such a signature, and
acting on this hint he found that after half an hour's practice he was
able to make almost as good a forgery as Parker. When therefore it came
time for him to address the jury he pointed out the fact that Parker's
performance on the witness-stand really established nothing at all--that
any one could forge such a signature from memory after but a few
minutes' practice.

"To prove to you how easily this can be done," said he, "I will
volunteer to write a better Kauser signature than Parker did."

He thereupon seized a pen and began to demonstrate his ability to