And while he was arguing, a jolly-looking old lawyer had written, in the fly-leaf of a law-book on his knee, and had passed with a wink to a young man near him who had that very morning been admitted to the bar, these lines:-- “When callow Blackstones soar too high, Quit common-sense, and reckless fly, Soon, Icarus-like, they headlong fall, And down come client, case, and all.” The district-attorney had not thought it worth while to expend much strength upon his closing argument; but being a jovial stump-speaker, of a wide reputation within narrow limits, he had not been able to refrain from making merry over Wood's statement that the basket which he had been seen bearing home, on the eventful night, was a basket of eels. “Fine eels those, gentlemen! We have seen gold-fish and silver-fish, but golden eels are first discovered by this defendant The apostle, in Holy Writ, caught a fish with a coin in its mouth; but this man leaves the apostle in the dim distance when he finds eels that are all money. No storied fisherman of Bagdad, catching enchanted princes disguised as fishes in the sea, ever hooked such a treasure as this defendant hooked when he hooked that basket of eels! [Rustling appreciation of the jest among the jury.] If a squirming, twisting, winding, wriggling eel, gentlemen, can be said at any given moment to have a back, we may distinguish this new-found species as the greenback eel. It is a common saying that no man can hold an eel and remain a Christian. I should like to have viewed the pious equanimity of this good man when he laid his hands on that whole bed of eels. In happy, barefoot boyhood, gentlemen, we used to find mud-turtles marked with initials or devices cut in their shells; but what must have been our friend's surprise to find, in the muddy bed of Harlow's Creek, eels marked with a steel-engraving of the landing of Columbus and the signature of the Register of the Treasury! I hear that a corporation is now being formed by the title of The Harlow's Creek Greenback National Bank-bill Eel-fishing Company, to follow up, with seines and spears, our worthy friend's discovery! I learn that the news of this rich placer has spread to the golden mountains of the West, and that the exhausted intellects which have been reduced to such names for their mines as 'The Tombstone,' 'The Red Dog,' the 'Mrs. E. J. Parkhurst,' are likely now to flood us with prospectuses of the 'Eel Mine,' 'The Flat Eel,' 'The Double Eel,' and then, when they get ready to burst upon confiding friends, 'The Consolidated Eels.'” It takes but little to make a school or a court-room laugh, and the speech had appeared to give a good deal of amusement to the listeners. To all? Did it amuse that man who sat, with folded arms, harsh and rigid, at the dock? Did it divert that white-faced woman, cowering in a corner, listening as in a dream?