n a thief in more different ways than
any deputy assistant district attorney known to memory--with the aid of
his little book. He could lasso and throw any galloping criminal,
however fierce, with a gracefully uncoiling rope of deadly adjectives.
On all of which he properly prided himself until he became unendurable
to his fellows and insufferable to Peckham, who would have cheerfully
fired him months gone by had he had a reason or had there been any other
legal esoteric to take his place.

Yet pride goeth before a fall. And I am glad of it, for Magnus was a
conceited little ass. This yarn is about the fall of Caput Magnus almost
as much as it is about the uxorious Higgleby, though the two are
inextricably entwined together.

* * * * *

"Mr. Tutt," remarked Tutt after Higgleby's departure, "that new client
of ours is certainly _sui generis_."

"That's no crime," smiled the senior partner, reaching for the
malt-extract bottle.

"His knowledge of matrimony and the laws governing the domestic
relations is certainly exhaustive--not to say exhausting. I look like a
piker beside him."

"For which," replied Mr. Tutt, "you may well be thankful."

"I am," replied Tutt devoutly. "But you could put what I know about
bigamy in that malt-extract bottle."

"I prefer the present contents!" retorted Mr. Tutt. "Bigamy is a
fascinating crime, involving as it does such complicated subjects as the
history of the institution of marriage, the ecclesiastical or canonical
law governing divorce and annulment, the interesting doctrines of
affinity and consanguinity, suits for alienation of affection and
criminal conversation, the conflict of laws, the White Slave Act--"

"Interstate commerce, so to speak?" suggested Tutt mischievously.

"Condonation, collusion and connivance," continued Mr. Tutt, brushing
him aside, "reinstitution of conjugal rights, the law of feme sole, The
Married Woman's Act, separation _a mensa et thoro_, abandonment,
jurisdiction, alimony, custody of children, precontract--"

"Help! You're breaking my heart!" cried Tutt. "No little lawyer could
know all about such things. It would take a big lawyer."

"Not at all! Not at all!" soothed Mr. Tutt, sipping his eleven-o'clock
nourishment and fingering for a stogy. "When it comes to divorce one
lawyer knows as much about the law as another. Not even the Supreme
Court is able to tell whether a man and woman are really married or not
w