e reports
which she used to copy painfully at night by the light of a candle.
The old man, absorbed by his deductions, with his trained habits of
observation and his prodigious memory, never seemed to realize the
drudgery imposed upon the girl by his endless dictation.

"To-morrow," the heavenly creature had said softly, like a caress, in
the woman's ear when an attendant had taken her through the little
door into the empty box. But the to-morrow broke with every illusion
vanished.

The woman sat beside her husband in the dismal court-room when the court
convened. The judge, old and tired, was on the bench. A sulphurous,
depressing fog entered from the city. The court-room smelled of a
cleaner's mop. The jury entered; and a few spectators, who looked as
though they might have spent the night on the benches of the park out,
side, drifted in. The attorneys and the officials of the court were
present and the trial resumed.

Every detail of the departed, evening was, to the woman, a mirage except
the brutal threat of the attorney, uttered before she had gone down into
the street. This threat, with that power of reality which evil things
seem always to possess, now materialized. After the court had opened,
but before the trial could proceed, the attorney for the defendant rose
and addressed the court.

He spoke for some moments, handling his innuendoes with skill. His
intent was to withdraw from the case. He realized that this was an
unusual procedure and that the course must be justified upon a high
ethical plane. He was a person of acumen and of no inconsiderable skill
and he succeeded. Without making any direct charge, and disclaiming any
intent to prejudice the prisoner and his defense, or to deprive him of
any safeguard of the law, he was able to convey the impression that
he had been misled in undertaking the defense of the case; that
his confidence in the innocence of the accused had been removed by
unquestionable evidence which he had been led to believe did not exist.

He made this explanation with profound regret. But he felt that, having
been induced to undertake the defense by representations not justified
in fact, and by an impression of the nature of the case which
developments in the court-room had not confirmed, he had the right to
step aside out of an equivocal position. He wished to do this without
injury to the prisoner and while there was yet an opportunity for him to
obtain other counsel. The whole