d a vivid white and green.
Then the owner of the 'Lone Star' hostelry, not to be outdone, had his
place painted also, and had a couple of extra windows cut in the wall.
So it went, and if they had kept it up long enough, probably in the end
people stopping at one of the places would have been fairly comfortable.
But before matters reached that unbelievable pitch, O'Day, owner of the
'Palace,' was killed in a shooting fracas. The man who plugged him
claimed he was playing 'crooked' poker, and I think that in all
probability he was. If he wasn't, it was about the only time in his life
that he ever played straight."

"What happened to the man who did the shooting?" asked Bert.

"Well, O'Day wasn't what you'd call a very popular character," replied
Mr. Melton, "and nobody felt very much cut up over his sudden exit from
this vale of tears. They got up an impromptu jury, but the twelve 'good
men and true' failed to find the defendant guilty."

"But how did they get around it?" asked Tom. "There was no doubt about
who did the killing, was there?"

"Not the least in the world," replied Mr. Melton with a laugh; "but as I
say, popular sentiment was with the man who did the shooting, so the
jury turned in a verdict that ran something in this fashion, if I
remember rightly: 'We find that the deceased met death while
inadvisably attempting to stop a revolver bullet in motion' or words to
that effect. I thought at the time it was a masterpiece of legal
fiction."

"I should say it was," commented Dick. "The quibbles and technicalities
that make our laws a good deal of a joke to-day have nothing much on
that."

"That's a fact," agreed Mr. Melton; "some of the results of our modern
'justice,' so called, are certainly laughable. It's all very well to
give a man every chance and the benefit of every doubt, but when a
conviction is set aside because the court clerk was an hour behind time
getting to court on the day of the trial, it begins to look as though
things were being carried too far. Mere technicalities and lawyers'
quibbles should not have the weight with judges that for some reason
they seem to possess."

"I've no doubt," remarked Bert, "that some of the rough and ready courts
such as you were just telling us about meted out a pretty fair brand of
justice at that."

"Yes, they did," replied Mr. Melton. "They got right down to the core of
the argument, and cut out all confusing side issues. If, for instance,
three witne