silver tea service cost fifteen thousand dollars and weighs
eight hundred pounds!" whispered Mr. Hepplewhite.

"Order in the court!" shouted Captain Phelan, pounding upon the oak rail
of the bar, and Mr. Hepplewhite subsided.

Yet as he sat there between his lawyers listening to all the
extraordinary things that the Grand Jury evidently had believed Schmidt
intended to do, the suspicion began gradually to steal over him that
something was not entirely right somewhere. Why, it was ridiculous to
charge the man with trying to carry off a silver service weighing nearly
half a ton when he simply had gone to bed and fallen asleep. Still,
perhaps that was the law.

However, when the assistant district attorney opened the People's case
to the jury Mr. Hepplewhite began to feel much more at ease. Indeed
O'Brien made it very plain that the defendant had been guilty of a very
grievous--he pronounced it "gree-vious"--offense in forcing his way into
another man's private house. It might or might not be burglary--that
would depend upon the testimony--but in any event it was a criminal,
illegal entry and he should ask for a conviction. A man's house was his
castle and--to quote from that most famous of orators and
statesmen--Edmund Burke--"the wind might enter, the rain might enter,
but the King of England might not enter!" Thus Schmidt could not enter
the house of Hepplewhite without making himself amenable to the law.

Hepplewhite was filled with admiration for Mr. O'Brien, and his drooping
spirits reared their wilted heads as the prosecutor called Bibby to the
stand and elicited from him the salient features of the case. The jury
was vastly interested in the butler personally, as well as his account
rendered in the choicest cockney of how he had discovered Schmidt in his
master's bed. O'Brien bowed to Mr. Tutt and told him that he might
cross-examine.

And then it was that Mr. Hepplewhite discovered why he had been haunted
by that mysterious feeling of guilt; for by some occult and subtle
method of suggestion on the part of Mr. Tutt, the case, instead of
being a trial of Schmidt, resolved itself into an attack upon Mr.
Hepplewhite and his retainers and upon the corrupt minions of the law
who had violated every principle of justice, decency and morality in
order to accomplish the unscrupulous purposes of a merciless
aristocrat--meaning him. With biting sarcasm, Mr. Tutt forced from the
writhing Bibby the admission that the pri