Mr. Tutt.
"I wish it to appear upon the record that the manner of the court is
most unjudicial and damaging to the defendant."

"Take your seat, sir!" barked Babson, his features swelling with anger.
"Your language is contemptuous!"

The jury were leaning forward intently. Trained militiamen of the
gibbet, they nevertheless admired this little woman's fearlessness and
the old lawyer's pugnacity. On the rear wall the yellow face of the old
self-regulating clock, that had gayly ticked so many men into the
electric chair, leered shamelessly across at the blind goddess.

"Answer the question, madam! If, as you claim, you are a patriotic
citizen of this commonwealth, having due respect for its institutions
and for the statutes, you will not set up your own ideas of what the law
ought to be in defiance of the law as it stands. I order you to answer!
If you do not I shall be obliged to take steps to compel you to do so."

In the dead silence that followed, the stones in the edifice of Miss
Beekman's inherited complacency, with each beat of the clock, fell one
by one to the ground until it was entirely demolished. Vainly she
struggled to test her conscience by her loyalty to her country's laws.
But the task was beyond her.

Tightly compressing her lips she sat silent in the chair, while the
delighted reporters scribbled furious messages to their city editors
that Miss Althea Beekman, one of the Four Hundred, was defying Judge
Babson, and to rush up a camera man right off in a taxi, and to look her
up in the morgue for a front-page story. O'Brien glanced uneasily at
Babson. Possible defiance on the part of this usually unassuming lady
had not entered into his calculations. The judge took a new tack.

"You probably do not fully understand the situation in which you are
placed," he explained. "You are not responsible for the law. Neither are
you responsible in any way for the consequences to this defendant,
whatever they may be. The matter is entirely out of your hands. You are
compelled to do as the court orders. As a law-abiding citizen you have
no choice in the matter."

Miss Althea's modest intellect reeled, but she stood her ground, the
ghost of the Signer at her elbow.

"I am sorry," she replied, "but my own self-respect will not allow me to
answer."

"In that case," declared Babson, playing his trump card, "it will be my
unpleasant duty to commit you for contempt."

There was a bustle of excitement about the re