extraordinary than the case against her. This, in brief, was to the
effect that she had known Peabody to be a police officer all along, but
that it had occurred to her that if she could deceive him into believing
that it was she _herself_ who had committed the forgeries her husband
might get off, and that later she might in turn establish her own
innocence. She had therefore hastily scratched her name on the top of a
sheet already containing her husband's handwriting and had told Peabody
that the signatures had been written by herself. That the sheet had been
written in the officer's presence she declared to be a pure invention
on his part to secure her conviction. She told her extremely illogical
story with a certain winsome naivete which carried an air of
semi-probability with it. From her deportment on the stand one would
have taken her for a boarding school miss who in some inconsequent
fashion had got mixed up in a frolic for which no really logical
explanation could be given.

Then the door in the back of the court room opened and James Parker was
led to the bar, where in the presence of the jury he pleaded guilty to
the forgery of the very signature for which his wife was standing trial.
(Kauser check, Fig. 6.) He was then sworn as a witness, took the stand
and testified that _he_ had written all the forged signatures to the
checks, including the signatures upon "the Peabody sheet."

The District Attorney found himself in an embarrassing position. If
Parker was the forger, why not challenge him to write the forged
signatures upon the witness stand and thus to prove his alleged capacity
for so doing? The obvious objection to this was that Parker, in
anticipation of this test, had probably been practicing the signature in
the Tombs for months. On the other hand if the District Attorney did not
challenge him to write the signatures, the defense would argue that he
was afraid to do so, and that as Parker had sworn himself to be the
forger it was not incumbent upon the defense to prove it further--that
that was a matter for cross examination.

With considerable hesitation the prosecuting attorney asked Parker to
write the Kauser signature, which was the one set forth in the
indictment charging the forgery, and after much backing and filling on
the part of the witness, who ingeniously complained that he was in a bad
nervous condition owing to lack of morphine, in consequence of which his
hand trembled and he was in n