"I'll be back there some day, won't I," he said, wistfully, "and hear
it for myself."

"Carroll," said Holcombe, drawing the former to one side, "suppose I
see this cabman when I reach home, and get him to withdraw the charge,
or agree not to turn up when it comes to trial."

Carroll's face clouded in an instant. "Now, listen to me, Holcombe,"
he said. "You let my dirty work alone. There's lots of my friends who
have nothing better to do than just that. You have something better to
do, and you leave me and my rows to others. I like you for what you
are, and not for what you can do for me. I don't mean that I don't
appreciate your offer, but it shouldn't have come from an Assistant
District Attorney to a fugitive criminal."

"What nonsense!" said Holcombe.

"Don't say that; don't say that!" said Carroll, quickly, as though it
hurt him. "You wouldn't have said it a month ago."

Holcombe eyed the other with an alert, confident smile. "No, Carroll,"
he answered, "I would not." He put his hand on the other's shoulder
with a suggestion in his manner of his former self, and with a touch
of patronage. "I have learned a great deal in a month," he said.
"Seven battles were won in seven days once. All my life I have been
fighting causes, Carroll, and principles. I have been working with
laws against law-breakers. I have never yet fought a man. It was not
poor old Meakim, the individual, I prosecuted, but the corrupt
politician. Now, here I have been thrown with men and women on as
equal terms as a crew of sailors cast away upon a desert island. We
were each a law unto himself. And I have been brought face to face,
and for the first time in my life, not with principles of conduct, not
with causes, and not with laws, but with my fellow men."

THE BOY ORATOR OF ZEPATA CITY

The day was cruelly hot, with unwarranted gusts of wind which swept
the red dust in fierce eddies in at one end of Main Street and out at
the other, and waltzed fantastically across the prairie. When they had
passed, human beings opened their eyes again to blink hopelessly at
the white sun, and swore or gasped, as their nature moved them. There
were very few human beings in the streets, either in Houston Avenue,
where there were dwelling-houses, or in the business quarter on Main
Street. They were all at the new court-house, and every one possessed
of proper civic pride was either in the packed court-room itself, or
standing on the high steps outsi