dley sternly. "I want the jury to compare
you."

As the prisoner and the witness faced each other the court room
blossomed with smiles. Harold looked very pale and delicate beside the
coarse, muscular hostler, who turned red and looked foolish.

Ultimately the judge sustained the objection, but the work was done. A
dramatic contrast had been drawn, and the jury perceived the
pusillanimity of Slocum's story. This was the position of the defense.
Harold was a boy, the hostler had insulted him, had indeed struck him
with a whip. Mad with rage, and realizing the greater strength of his
assailant, the prisoner had drawn a knife.

In rebuttal, the prosecution made much of Harold's fierce words. He
meant to kill. He was a dangerous boy. "Speaking with due reverence for
his parents," the lawyer said, "the boy has been a scourge. Again and
again he has threatened his playmates with death. These facts must
stand. The State is willing to admit the disparity of strength, so
artfully set forth by the defense, but it must not be forgotten that the
boy was known to carry deadly weapons, and that he was subject to blind
rages. It was not, therefore, so much a question of punishing the boy as
of checking his assaults upon society. To properly punish him here would
have a most salutary effect upon his action in future. The jury must
consider the case without sentiment."

Old Brown arose after the State had finished. Everyone knew his power
before a jury, and the room was painfully silent as he walked with
stately tread to a spittoon and cleared his mouth of a big wad of
tobacco. He was the old-fashioned lawyer, formal, deliberate; and though
everybody enjoyed Bradley Talcott's powerful speech, they looked for
drama from Brown. The judge waited patiently while the famous old lawyer
played his introductory part. At last, after silently pacing to and fro
for a full minute, he turned, and began in a hard, dry, nasal voice.

"Your Honor, I'm not so sure of the reforming effect of a penitentiary.
I question the salutary quality of herding this delicate and
high-spirited youth with the hardened criminals of the State." His
strident, monotonous tone, and the cynical inflections of his voice made
the spectators shiver with emotion as under the power of a great actor.
He paced before the judge twice before speaking again. "Your Honor,
there is more in this case than has yet appeared. Everyone in this room
knows that the elopement of Dorothy B