"Seventy?" "Yes." "Eighty?" "Yes," responded the young lady with a countenance absolutely devoid of expression. "A hundred?" inquired the lawyer with a thrill of eager triumph in his voice. There was a significant hush in the court-room Then the witness, with a patient smile and a slight lifting of her pretty eyebrows, remarked quietly: "Mr. Wellman, don't you think we have carried our little joke far enough?" There is no witness in the world more difficult to cope with than a shrewd old woman who apes stupidity, only to reiterate the gist of her testimony in such incisive fashion as to leave it indelibly imprinted on the minds of the jury. The lawyer is bound by every law of decency, policy and manners to treat the aged dame with the utmost consideration. He must allow her to ramble on discursively in defiance of every rule of law and evidence in answer to the simplest question; must receive imperturbably the opinions and speculations upon every subject of both herself and (through her) of her neighbors; only to find when he thinks she must be exhausted by her own volubility, that she is ready, at the slightest opportunity, to break away again into a tangle of guesswork and hearsay, interwoven with conclusions and ejaculation. Woe be unto him if he has not sense enough to waive her off the stand! He might as well try to harness a Valkyrie as to restrain a pugnacious old Irishwoman who is intent on getting the whole business before the jury in her own way. In the recent case of Gustav Dinser, convicted of murder, a vigorous old lady took the stand and testified forcibly against the accused. She was as "smart as paint," as the saying goes, and resolutely refused to answer any questions put to her by counsel for the defence. Instead, she would raise her voice and make a savage onslaught upon the prisoner, rehearsing his brutal treatment of the deceased on previous occasions, and getting in the most damaging testimony. "Do you say, Mrs.--" the lawyer would inquire deferentially, "that you heard the sound of three blows?" "Oh, thim blows!" the old lady would cry--"thim turrible blows! I could hear the villain as he laid thim on! I could hear the poor, pitiful groans av her, and she so sufferin'! 'Twas awful! Howly Saints,'twould make yer blood run cowld!" "Stop! stop!" exclaimed the lawyer. "Ah, stop is it? Ye can't stop me till Oi've had me say to tell the whole truth. I says to me daughter Ellen, says I: 'Th' horrid baste is afther murtherin' the poor thing,' says I; 'run out an' git an officer!'" "I object to all this!" shouts the lawyer. "Ah, ye objec', do ye?" retorts the old lady. "Shure an' ye'd have been after objectin' if ye'd heard thim turrible blows that kilt her--the poor, sufferin', swate crayter! I hope he gits all that's comin' to him--bad cess to him for a blood-thirsty divil!" The lawyer ignominiously abandoned the attack.