There was a witness against him, a tall, slender young German shoemaker, and it was against him that Rheinhold’s outcries were directed. It was not clear just what he was trying to say, and there was small disposition to help him make it clear. His lawyer indeed seemed embarrassed, as though in making his incoherent interruptions Rheinhold were committing a _contretemps_; he must wait for his turn to testify, that all might be done in order and according to the ancient rules and precedents, and, in a word, as it should be done. Under the rules of evidence, of course, Rheinhold could not be allowed to express his opinion of the shoemaker; that was not permissible. The court could not be concerned with the passions of the human heart; this man before the court had a family, and he had neglected to provide food for it, and for such a condition it was written and printed in a book that the appropriate remedy was a certain number of days or months in the workhouse. And so while Rheinhold silently and philosophically acquiesced, we tried him during one whole day, we argued nearly all the next day to the jury, and the jury stayed out all that night and in the morning returned a verdict of guilty. And Rheinhold was sent to the workhouse for nine months. XIX It was regarded as a triumph for the Humane Society,--the newspapers had printed accounts of the trial,--but it was a victory of which I felt pretty much ashamed; it all seemed so useless, so absurd, so barbarous, when you came to think of it, and what good it had done Maria, or anyone, it was difficult to determine. And so, before very long, I went to the workhouse board and had Rheinhold paroled, and he disappeared, vanished toward the West, and was never heard of more. Meanwhile Maria lived on in her little house as best she could, and with what assistance we could provide her. The Humane Society helped a little, and my wife made some clothes for the baby, and a good-natured doctor in the neighborhood attended them when they were sick, which was a good deal of the time; and Maria seemed happy enough and contented, relying with such entire confidence on her friends that one cold night she sent for me in great urgency, and when I arrived she pointed to the stove, which was smoking and not doing its work in a satisfactory manner at all. I mended it and got the fire going, and they managed to survive the winter; and when spring came Maria appeared at the office and wished to apply to the courts for a divorce. It seemed as good a thing to do as any, and the evidence of Rheinhold’s cruel neglect was by this time so conclusive that it was not much trouble to obtain a decree, especially as the case came before a delightful old bachelor judge who felt that if people were not divorced they ought to be; and after listening to two of the five or six witnesses I had subpœnaed he granted Maria her freedom.