by
materialistic lives; and at the same time the hand of the clock crept
steadily on until he and it reached Chateau-Thierry and half past four
together.

"Bang!" went Babson's gavel just as Mr. Tutt was leading Mr. Walsh, Mr.
Tompkins and the others through the winding paths of the Argonne forests
with tin helmets on their heads in the struggle for liberty.

"You may conclude your address in the morning, Mr. Tutt," said the judge
with supreme unction. "Adjourn court!"

Gray depression weighed down Mr. Tutt's soul as he trudged homeward. He
had made a good speech, but it had had absolutely nothing to do with the
case, which the jury would perceive as soon as they thought it over. It
was a confession of defeat. Angelo would be convicted of murder in the
first degree and electrocuted, Rosalina would be a widow, and somehow he
would be in a measure responsible for it. The tragedy of human life
appalled him. He felt very old, as old as the dead-and-gone authors from
whom he had quoted with such remarkable facility. He belonged with them;
he was too old to practise his profession.

"Law, Mis' Tutt," expostulated Miranda, his ancient negro handmaiden, as
he pushed away the chop and mashed potato, and even his glass of claret,
untasted, in his old-fashioned dining room on West Twenty-third Street,
"you ain't got no appetite at all! You's sick, Mis' Tutt."

"No, no, Miranda!" he replied weakly. "I'm just getting old."

"You's mighty spry for an old man yit," she protested. "You kin make dem
lawyer men hop mighty high when you tries. Heh, heh! I reckon dey ain't
got nuffin' on my Mistah Tutt!"

Upstairs in his library Mr. Tutt strode up and down before the empty
grate, smoking stogy after stogy, trying to collect his thoughts and
devise something to say upon the morrow, but all his ideas had flown.
There wasn't anything to say. Yet he swore Angelo should not be offered
up as a victim upon the altar of unscrupulous ambition. The hours passed
and the old banjo clock above the mantel wheezed eleven, twelve; then
one, two. Still he paced up and down, up and down in a sort of trance.
The air of the library, blue with the smoke of countless stogies,
stifled and suffocated him. Moreover he discovered that he was hungry.
He descended to the pantry and salvaged a piece of pie, then unchained
the front door and stepped forth into the soft October night.

A full moon hung over the deserted streets of the sleeping city. In
divers p