"I don't care a damn about Brown!" he assured them. "He can go to hell for all of me! But I don't see how you can acquit this feller when the evidence is uncontradicted that he told Brown he was a veterinary and treated his horse. I'd be violating my oath if I voted for acquittal after that testimony. I ain't going to commit perjury for nobody! I'd like to oblige you gentlemen, too, and vote your way, but I just can't with that evidence stickin' in my crop. If it wasn't for that--" "He could 'a' treated the horse without doing it as a veterinary, just as Mr. Tutt said!" interjected the tall man. "Good for you!" said the salesman, fully restored to equanimity. "You're gettin' intelligent. Serve on a few more juries--" "But he said he was a veterinary," insisted Brown's friend. "How could he have treated the horse as anything else but as a veterinary when he said he was treating him as a veterinary?" "Maybe he just thought he was doing it as a veterinary", commented the gloom in black. "He may have tried to do it as a veterinary and failed. In that case he didn't do it as a veterinary but just as a plain man. Get me?" "No, I don't!" snorted the red-faced one. "That's all bull. He said he was a vet and he treated the horse as a vet and got five dollars for it." "How do you know he did?" unexpectedly asked Bently. "Because he said so himself. That was part of the conversation between Brown and Lowry," declared the obstinate summer friend of Brown. "If it wasn't for that--" "If it wasn't for that you'd acquit?" demanded Bently sharply. "Yes. Sure I would!" "Then I say you should disregard all that conversation because it was a privileged communication between a doctor--Brown--and his patient--Lowry!" declared Bently heatedly. "But the judge said it wasn't privileged!" retorted the other. "Mr. Tutt said it was, though," shot back the salesman. "Well, the judge said--" "Let's go in and find out who said what," proposed the tall man. "I'd like to know myself. I don't remember who said anything any longer." So they filed back into court. "Your Honor," stuttered the foreman, licking his lips in embarrassment, "some of the gen'l'muns vant to inguire veder the gonversation between Mr. Brown and Mr. Lowry is privileged or veder we haf to belief it?" The judge, who had evidently expected that the return of the jury was for the purpose of declaring the defendant guilty, scowled. "The rule is," said he wearily, "that conversations between a doctor and his patient are privileged and cannot be testified to without the consent of the patient. If Brown had been a doctor--which he is not--it is possible that I might have sustained Mr. Tutt's objection on the ground and struck out the conversation. But he only pretended to be a doctor, and no privilege exists under those circumstances even if in some cases it seems to work a hardship upon the one who is deceived. The conversation in this instance is part of the record. You may retire."