yawn.

"The tiresome old man," she thought. "He actually seems to enjoy saying
all that."

His Honor went on defining a reasonable doubt:

"It is not a whim or a speculation or a surmise. It is a doubt founded
on reason--on a reason which may be stated."

Lydia thought, "Imagine drawing a salary for telling people that a
reasonable doubt is a doubt founded on reason." She had not imagined
that she would be bored at any moment of her own trial, but she
was--bored beyond belief.

"I must call your attention to Section 30 of the Penal Law, which says
that whenever a crime is distinguished into degrees, the jury, if they
convict, must find the degree of the crime of which the prisoner is
guilty. Manslaughter is a crime distinguished into degrees--namely, the
first and the second degree."

Lydia thought that if by this time the jury did not know the
distinction between the two they must be half-witted, but His Honor went
on to define them:

"In the first degree, when committed without design to effect death by a
person committing or attempting to commit a misdemeanor."

She thought that she knew that phrase now, as when she was a child she
had known some of the rules of Latin grammar--verbs conjugated with
_ad, ante, con, in, inter_--what did they do? How funny that she
couldn't remember. Her eyes had again fixed themselves on the spot on
the carpet so near O'Bannon's feet that she was aware of any movement on
his part, and yet she was not looking at him. A fly came limply crawling
into her vision, and her eyes followed it as it lit on O'Bannon's boot.
She glanced up to where his hand was resting on his knee, and then
wrenched her eyes away--back to the floor again.

"If you find that the defendant is not guilty of manslaughter in the
first degree you must then consider whether or not she is guilty of
manslaughter in the second degree--that is, whether she occasioned the
death of Drummond by an act of culpable negligence. Culpable negligence
has been defined by Recorder Smyth in the case of--in the case of the
People against Bedenseick as the omission to do something which a
reasonable and prudent man would do, or the doing of something which
such a man would not do under the circumstances of each particular
case. Or, what is the same thing----"

How incredibly tiresome! She glanced at the jury. They were actually
listening, drinking in the judge's words. All of a sudden she knew by
his tone that he was coming