uence by the lapidary of culture:

"If Your Honor please, I move the cause of the People of the state of
New York against Theophilus Higgleby, indicted for bigamy."

Peckham and the rest couldn't believe their ears. It wasn't possible!
That perfect specimen of tonsorial and sartorial art, warbling like a
legal Caruso, conducting himself so naturally, easily and casually,
couldn't be old Caput Magnus! They pinched themselves.

"Say!" ejaculated Peckham. "What's happened to him? When did Sir Henry
sign up with us?"

Mr. Tutt across the inclosure in front of the jury box raised his bushy
eyebrows and looked whimsically at the D. A. over his spectacles.

"Are you ready, Mr. Tutt?" inquired the judge.

"Entirely so, Your Honor," responded the lawyer.

"Then impanel a jury."

The jury was impaneled, Mr. Caput Magnus passing through that trying
ordeal with great eclat.

"You may proceed to open your case," directed the judge.

The staff saw a very white Caput Magnus rise and bow in the direction of
the bench. Then he stepped to the jury box and cleared his throat. His
official associates held their breath expectantly. Would he--or wouldn't
he? There was a pause.

Then: "Mister Foreman and gentlemen of the jury," declaimed Caput in
flutelike tones: "The defendant is indicted for the crime of bigamy, an
offense alike repugnant to religion, civilization and to the law."

The words flowed from him like a rippling sunlit stream; encircled him
like a necklace of verbal jewels, a rosary, each word a pearl or a bead
or whatever it is. With perfect articulation, enunciation and
gesticulation Mr. Caput Magnus went on to inform his hearers that Mr.
Higgleby was a bigamist of the deepest dye, that he had feloniously,
wilfully and knowingly married two several females, and by every
standard of conduct was utterly and entirely detestable.

Mr. Higgleby, flanked by Tutt and Mr. Tutt, listened calmly. Caput
warmed to his task.

The said Higgleby, said he, had as aforesaid in the indictment committed
the act of bigamy, to wit, of marriage when he had one legal wife
already, in New York City on the seventeenth of last December, by
marrying in Grace Church Chantry the lady whom they saw sitting by the
other lady--he meant the one with the red feather in her bonnet--that is
to say, her hat, whereas the other lady, as he had said aforesaid, had
been lawfully and properly married to the defendant the preceding May,
to wit, in Chica