PROOFS

THE WARRANT against Joam Dacosta, alias Joam Garral, had been issued
by the assistant of Judge Ribeiro, who filled the position of the
magistrate in the province of Amazones, until the nomination of the
successor of the late justice.

This assistant bore the name of Vicente Jarriquez. He was a surly
little fellow, whom forty years' practice in criminal procedure had not
rendered particularly friendly toward those who came before him. He had
had so many cases of this sort, and tried and sentenced so many rascals,
that a prisoner's innocence seemed to him _a priori_ inadmissable. To
be sure, he did not come to a decision unconscientiously; but his
conscience was strongly fortified and was not easily affected by the
circumstances of the examination or the arguments for the defense. Like
a good many judges, he thought but little of the indulgence of the jury,
and when a prisoner was brought before him, after having passed
through the sieve of inquest, inquiry, and examination, there was every
presumption in his eyes that the man was quite ten times guilty.

Jarriquez, however, was not a bad man. Nervous, fidgety, talkative,
keen, crafty, he had a curious look about him, with his big head on
his little body; his ruffled hair, which would not have disgraced the
judge's wig of the past; his piercing gimlet-like eyes, with their
expression of surprising acuteness; his prominent nose, with which he
would assuredly have gesticulated had it been movable; his ears wide
open, so as to better catch all that was said, even when it was out of
range of ordinary auditory apparatus; his fingers unceasingly tapping
the table in front of him, like those of a pianist practicing on
the mute; and his body so long and his legs so short, and his feet
perpetually crossing and recrossing, as he sat in state in his
magistrate's chair.

In private life, Jarriquez, who was a confirmed old bachelor, never left
his law-books but for the table which he did not despise; for chess, of
which he was a past master; and above all things for Chinese puzzles,
enigmas, charades, rebuses, anagrams, riddles, and such things, with
which, like more than one European justice--thorough sphinxes by taste
as well as by profession--he principally passed his leisure.

It will be seen that he was an original, and it will be seen also how
much Joam Dacosta had lost by the death of Judge Ribeiro, inasmuch as
his case would come before this not very agreeable ju