eason that he did not look towards them. They might
stare themselves stone blind, but they would have no magnetic influence
upon that strong, concentrated, earnest soul!

Ishmael was not in the least embarrassed in standing up to address the
court for the first time, simply because he was not thinking of himself
or his audience, but of his client, and her case as he wished to set it
forth; and he was not looking at the spectators, but alternately at the
court and at the notes in his hand.

He did not make a long opening like the Giant Wiseman had done; for he
wished to reserve himself for the closing speech in final reply to the
others. He just made a plain statement of his client's case as it is in
part known to the reader.

He told the court how, at the age of fifteen, she had been decoyed from
her mother's house and married by the plaintiff, a man more than twice
her age; how when she had come into her property he had squandered it
all by a method that he, the plaintiff, called speculation, but that
others called gambling; how he had then left her in poverty and
embarrassment and with one child to support; how he remained away two
years, during which time her friends had set his wife up in business in
a little fancy store. She was prospering when he came back, took up his
abode with her, got into debt which he could not pay, and when all her
stock and furniture was seized to satisfy his creditors, he took himself
off once more, leaving her with two children. She was worse off than
before; her friends grumbled, but once more came to her assistance, set
her up a little book and news agency, the stock of which was nearly all
purchased on credit, and told her plainly that if she permitted her
husband to come and break up her business again they would abandon and
leave her to her fate. Notwithstanding this warning, when at the end of
seven or eight months he came back again she received him again. He
stayed with her thirteen months; and suddenly disappeared without
bidding her good-by, leaving her within a few weeks of becoming the
mother of a third child. A few days after his disappearance another
execution was put into the house to satisfy a debt contracted by him,
and everything was sold under the hammer. She was reduced to the last
degree of poverty; her friends held themselves aloof, disgusted at what
they termed her culpable weakness; she and her children suffered from
cold and hunger; and during her subsequent il