“Not much!” he answered. “No trouble 'n that case! Jury won't leave their seats. These city fellers 'll find they 've bit off more 'n they can chew when they try to figure out John Wood done that. I only hope I 'll have the luck to be on that case--all hands on the jury whisper together a minute, and then clear him, right on the spot, and then shake hands with him all 'round!” “But something is worrying you,” she said. “What is it? You have looked it since noon.” “Oh, nothin',” he replied--“only George Cahoon came up to-noon to say that he was goin' West next week, and that he would have to have that money he let me have awhile ago. And where to get it--I don't know.” III. The court-room was packed. John Wood's trial was drawing to its close. Eli was on the jury. Some one had advised the prosecuting attorney, in a whisper, to challenge him, but he had shaken his head and said,-- “Oh, I could n't afford to challenge him for that; it would only leak out, and set the jury against me. I 'll risk his standing out against this evidence.” The trial had been short. It had been shown how the little building of the bank had been entered. Skilled locksmiths from the city had testified that the safe was opened with a key, and that the lock was broken afterward, from the inside, plainly to raise the theory of a forcible entry by strangers. It had been proved that the only key in existence, not counting that kept by the president, was in the possession of Wood, who was filling, for a few days, the place of the cashier--the president's brother--in his absence. It had been shown that Wood was met, at one o'clock of the night in question, crossing the fields toward his home, from the direction of the bank, with a large wicker basket slung over his shoulders, returning, as he had said, from eel-spearing in Harlow's Creek; and there was other circumstantial evidence. Mr. Clark, the president of the bank, had won the sympathy of every one by the modest way in which, with his eye-glasses in his hand, he had testified to the particulars of the loss which had left him penniless, and had ruined others whose little all was in his hands. And then in reply to the formal question, he had testified, amid roars of laughter from the court-room, that it was not he who robbed the safe. At this, even the judge and Wood's lawyer had not restrained a smile. This had left the guilt with Wood. His lawyer, an inexperienced young attorney,--who had done more or less business for the bank and would hardly have ventured to defend this case but that the president had kindly expressed his entire willingness that he should do so,--had, of course, not thought it worth while to cross-examine Mr. Clark, and had directed his whole argument against the theory that the safe had been opened with a key, and not by strangers. But he had felt all through that, as a man politely remarked to him when he finished, he was only butting his “head ag'in a stone wall.”