r. Tutt loitered into the corridor, stepped unostentatiously behind a
pillar, slipped into the adjoining court room--which happened to be
empty--and thence back into the passage upon which the jury rooms
opened. He found Cap Phelan standing before one of these with a finger
to his lips.

"Pst! They're at it a-ready!" whispered Phelan as Mr. Tutt slipped him a
stogy.

The transom above was open and through it drifted out a faint blue
cloud. A great hubbub was going on inside. Suddenly above it a harsh
voice rang out: "That ain't a reasonable doubt! I tell you, that ain't a
reasonable doubt! Aw, you give me a pain, you do!"

"I've got 'em!" grinned Mr. Tutt contentedly. "Phelan, bring me a
chair!"

Now right here is where this story begins--only here.

"Vell, gen'l'muns," said the foreman, who was a glove merchant and
looked like Sam Bernard, as they took their seats round the battered oak
table. "Vot you say? Shall we disguss or take a vote?"

"Let's take a smoke!" amended a real-estate broker. "No use goin' back
right off and getting stuck onto another damn case! Where's that
cuspidor?"

"Speakin' of veterinaries," chuckled a man with three rolls of fat on
his neck, "did y'ever hear the story of the negro and the mule with the
cough?"

None of them apparently ever had, so the stout brother told all about
how--ha, ha!--the mule coughed first.

"I remember that story now," remarked one of the jury reminiscently
while the fat man glared at him. "If I had my way all these veterinaries
would be in jail! They're a dangerous lot. I had a second cousin once
who'd paid a hundred dollars--a hundred dollars!--for a horse and it
got the colic. So he called in a veterinary and it died."

"Well, the vet didn't kill it, did he?" inquired the fat man scornfully.

"My cousin always claimed he did!" replied the other solemnly. "There
was some mistake about what he gave the horse--wood alcohol or
something--I forget what it was. Anyhow, I think they're all a dangerous
lot. They all ought to be locked up. I move to convict!"

"But neither of these fellers is a veterinary!" retorted a sad-looking
gentleman in black. "The charge is that one of 'em pretended to be--but
wasn't. So if he wasn't how could you convict him of being a
veterinary?"

"Well, if he had been I'd have convicted him all right," asserted the
first. "They're dangerous--like all these clairvoyants and soothsayers."

"Will somebody tell me?" requested a tall