ent person,
apparently, from Mrs. Stiles in an every-day situation. It may have been
the effect of the crowd or the effect on her system of her long and
painful illness, but she was agitated and nervous to the last degree.
She looked steadily at Mrs. Tarbell, except when, every now and then,
she looked uneasily about the room, and she gave her answers in so low a
voice that the judge two or three times asked her to repeat them. But
otherwise all went well enough. Mrs. Stiles knew who she was, where she
lived, and what she had been doing on the day of the accident. When the
critical moment came, Mrs. Tarbell caught her breath, but Mrs. Stiles
avoided the difficulty in safety.

"I held up my umbereller for that there car to stop," she said; "and it
stopped. And I went to git on; and then the first thing I knew I was
falling."

This was highly satisfactory. For the rest, Mrs. Stiles described the
manner in which the doctors had vainly endeavored to cure her injured
ankle, told how she had passed sleepless night after night in spite of
the morphia and sweet spirits of nitre, how she had been confined to her
bed for three weeks and had only got up to be moved to a chair, how she
suffered _tortures_ and lost her appetite, how it was months before she
could walk without crutches, and how every step she took gave her the
most excruciating agony, and so forth, and so forth. She also, at Mrs.
Tarbell's request, gave to the jury several interesting details
concerning, first, her sewing-machine; second, the income she had been
used to make by it; third, the effect of the accident upon her power to
propel the aforesaid engine.

(Bill shown to witness.)

"This is my doctor--Dr. Laycock's bill: it is not paid yet."

(Offered in evidence. Another bill shown to witness.)

"This is the apothecary's bill. It has not been paid."

(Offered in evidence.)

"Cross-examine," said Mrs. Tarbell; and Mrs. Stiles slowly turned and
began to hobble away from the witness-stand.

"Mrs. Stiles!" cried Mrs. Tarbell; and Mrs. Stiles turned round aghast.

"Come back, my dear madam," said the Honorable Pope blandly. "We are not
quite through with you yet,--not for a moment or two."

Mrs. Stiles looked more overcome than ever. "My goodness! I forgot," she
stammered, and clutched desperately at the front of the witness-box.

Mr. Pope ran his hand through his flowing locks and smiled at her
reassuringly. After asking her one or two sympathetic qu