myself' has always been the
excuse for helping oneself!"

"Rather good--that!" approved Miss Wiggin. "Can you do it again?"

"The victim of circumstances is inevitably one who has made a victim of
someone else," blandly went on Mr. Tutt without hesitation.

"Ting-a-ling! Right on the bell!" she laughed.

"It's true!" he assured her seriously. "There are two defenses that are
played out--necessity and instigation. They've never been any good since
the Almighty overruled Adam's plea in confession and avoidance that a
certain female co-defendant took advantage of his hungry innocence and
put him up to it."

"No one could respect a man who tried to hide behind a woman's skirts!"
commented Tutt.

"Are you referring to Adam?" inquired his partner. "Anyhow, come to
think of it, the maxim is not that 'Necessity is the first law of
Nature,' but that 'Necessity knows no law.'"

"I'll bet you--" began Tutt. Then he paused, recalling a certain
celebrated wager which he had lost to Mr. Tutt upon the question of who
cut Samson's hair. "I bet you don't know who said it!" he concluded
lamely.

"If I recall correctly," ruminated Mr. Tutt, "Shakspere says in 'Julius
Caesar' that 'Nature must obey necessity'; while Rabelais says
'Necessity has no law'; but the quotation we familiarly use is
'Necessity knows no law except to conquer,' which is from Publilius
Syrus."

"From who?" cried Tutt in ungrammatical surprise.

"Never mind!" soothed Miss Wiggin. "Anyway, it wasn't Raphael B. Hogan."

"Who certainly completely satisfies your definition so far as preying
upon the ignorant and helpless is concerned," said Mr. Tutt. "That man
is a human hyena--worse than a highwayman."

"Yet he's a swell dresser," interjected Tutt. "Owns his house and lives
in amity with his wife."

"Doubtless he's a loyal husband and a devoted father," agreed Mr. Tutt.
"But so, very likely, is the hyena. Certainly Hogan hasn't got the
excuse of necessity for doing what he does."

"Don't you suppose he has to give up good and plenty to somebody?"
demanded Tutt. "Cops and prison keepers and bondsmen and under sheriffs,
and all kinds of crooked petty officials. I should worry!"

_"Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum,"_

quoted Miss Wiggin reminiscently.

"A flea has to be a flea," continued Tutt. "He, or it, can't be anything
else, but Hogan doesn't have to be a law