nd Mr. Tutt were there; and Bonnie Doon, and the
stenographer and the jury. And on the front bench the two wives of
Higgleby sat, side by side, so frigidly that had that gentleman
possessed the gift of prevision he would never have married either of
them; Mrs. Tomascene Startup Higgleby and Mrs.--or Miss--Alvina Woodcock
(Higgleby)--depending upon the action of the jury. The entire cast in
the eternal matrimonial triangular drama was there except the judge and
the prosecutor in the form of Caput Magnus.

And then, preceding the judge by half a minute only, his entrance timed
histrionically to the second, he came, like Eudoxia, like a flame out of
the east. In swept Caput Magnus with all the dignity and grace of an
Irving playing Cardinal Wolsey. Haggard, yes; pale, yes; tremulous,
perhaps; but nevertheless glorious in a new cutaway coat, patent-leather
shoes, green tie, a rosebud blushing from his lapel, his hair newly cut
and laid down in beautiful little wavelets with pomatum, his figure
erect, his chin in air, a book beneath his arm, his right hand waving in
a delicate gesture of greeting; for Caput had taken O'Leary's suggestion
seriously, and had purchased that widely known and authoritative work to
which so many eminent barristers owe their entire success--"How to Try a
Case"--and in it he had learned that in order to win the hearts of the
jury one should make oneself beautiful.

"What in hell's he done to himself?" gasped O'Leary to O'Brien.

"He'll make a wonderful corpse!" whispered the latter in response.

"Order in the court! His Honor the Judge of General Sessions!" bellowed
an officer at this moment, and the judge came in.

Everybody got up. He bowed. Everybody bowed. Everybody sat down again.
A few, deeply affected, blew their noses. Then His Honor smiled genially
and asked what business there was before the court, and the clerk told
him that they were all there to try a man named Higgleby for bigamy, and
the judge, nodding at Caput, said to go ahead and try him.

In the bottom of his peritoneum Mr. Magnus felt that he carried a cold
stone the size of a grapefruit. His hands were ice, his lips bloodless.
And there was a Niagara where his hearing should have been. But he rose,
just as the book told him to do, in all his beauty, and enunciated in
the crystal tones he had learned during the last few weeks at Madam
Winterbottom's school of acting and elocution--in syllables chiseled
from the stone of eloq