“If you grant it we would have a few dollars to keep us in our old age, and Mr. Richer would have all we got from him and $2,212 interest money besides. “If you foreclose us, as this high-toned lawyer asks you to do, we will have nothing left, and Mr. Richer will have as much as he had before and $3,912 of our hard-earned money besides, part of it, Mistur Judge, bein money I got from home when father died.” The judge kind a looked at me pityin like, and says, says he: “Mrs. Gaskins, your argament may be all right from your point of view; but it is not law, Mrs. Gaskins. _It is not law._ We must proceed according to law.” “What is law?” says I. “Haint it justice?” pleadin like. The judge studied a minit, cleared his throat a time or two, and then says he: “It is supposed to be, Mrs. Gaskins. _It is supposed to be._ It should be justice; it should be. I appreciate the position of you two old people. I believe, as you say, that you have worked hard and saved that you might get your farm paid for and have a home in your old age. I believe you have done all you could do. Your argament has been well made. [Illustration: “‘This is the law, whether it is justice or not.’”] “But the law—the law, Mrs. Gaskins, says that if these notes have not been paid according to the provision of the mortgage, it can be foreclosed. “Even if you had paid all of the notes but one dollar, and had worked fifty years to pay them, and for some reason money had become scarce, and your farm under forced sale would not bring more than the one dollar, it would have to be sold, under the law, to satisfy that one dollar still due on it. “To make it plainer to you, Mrs. Gaskins, suppose that all the money was demonitized or destroyed except gold or silver (no matter which), and suppose that one man had succeeded in getting possession of all the money, and you owed one dollar on a farm that had cost you $3,800, you would have to get that one dollar from the man who had it, and he could place his own estimate of value on it, and could, if he so desired, demand 120 acres of good farm land for one of his dollars, and, in case of forced sale under the law, all the property you have would have to be sacrificed to satisfy that one dollar. It would have to be done, even though that one man who had all the money cornered owned your mortgage and had made the law, or got it made, that destroyed all the other money. So this, Mrs. Gaskins, is the law, whether it is justice or not, and I, as the judge of this court, must be governed by the law as it is. All the testimony you have mentioned is not such as could be admitted before this court. Hence I shall render judgment as prayed for by the plaintiff, with costs of this action attached.” [Illustration: “Jobe and me sot there dazed like.”] I wanted to say some more, but the judge told me the case was over, and that I need not say any more.