u we should pull through.
Leave the whole matter to me."

"I am willing to leave anything to you but my conscience," said Albert.

"The devil take your conscience, Mr. Charlton. If you are guilty, and so
awfully conscientious, plead guilty at once. If you propose to cheat the
government out of some years of penal servitude, why, well and good. But
you must have a devilish queer conscience, to be sure. If you talk in
that way, I shall enter a plea of insanity and get you off whether you
will or not. But you might at least hear me through before you talk about
conscience. Perhaps even _your_ conscience would not take offense at my
plan, unless you consider yourself foreordained to go to penitentiary."

"Let's hear your plan, Mr. Conger," said Charlton, hoping there might be
some way found by which he could escape.

Mr. Conger became bland again, resumed his cheerful and hopeful look,
brought down his fat white hand upon his knee, looked up over his
client's head, while he let his countenance blossom with the promise of
his coming communication. He then proceeded to say with a cheerful
chuckle that there was a flaw in the form of the indictment--the grand
jury had blundered. He had told Charlton that something would certainly
happen. And it had. Then Mr. Conger smote his knee again, and said
"Now!" once more, and proceeded to say that his plan was to get the
trial set late in the term, so that the grand jury should finish their
work and be discharged before the case came on. Then he would have the
indictment quashed.

He said this with so innocent and plausible a face that at first it did
not seem very objectionable to Charlton.

"What would we gain by quashing the indictment, Mr. Conger?"

"Well, if the indictment were quashed on the ground of a defect in its
substance, then the case falls. But this is only defective in form.
Another grand jury can indict you again. Now if the District Attorney
should be a little easy--and I think that, considering your age, and my
influence with him, he would be--a new commitment might not issue perhaps
before you could get out of reach of it. If you were committed again,
then we gain time. Time is everything in a bad case. You could not be
tried until the next term. When the next term comes, we could then see
what could be done. Meantime you could get bail."

If Charlton had not been entirely clear-headed, or entirely in a mood
to deal honestly with himself, he would have been p