"But I'm not saying anything to Mrs. Tarbell's discredit," said the Honorable Pope. "Not a bit of it. Not a bit of it. Her feelings do her infinite honor. In her appearance on our wordy and contentious stage I see the commencement of a new era of things. Let her be guided by her feelings. Let her still preserve that beautiful sympathy which is one of the chiefest ornaments of the female sex. It will bring to her a thousand cases of injustice and oppression which we hardened lawyers of the other sex have lost--if we ever had it--the instinct to detect. It will lead her and her sisters to find justice and consolation for innumerable victims of wrong-doing, whose hopes of obtaining redress might have seemed poor and empty to us less inspired practitioners. No one, no man, however jealous and crabbed in temper, will be sorry to see the law vivified by a spark of that genius, that inexplicable instinct by which women know what is right and make right to be done, where men fail and fail again." Here Mr. Pope paused, and his features were those of an angel. Then his expression changed to one of the most remarkable sagacity and wariness. "But no one, gentlemen, will fail to recognize the danger, easily avoided, which accompanies the lubricating, so to speak, of our legal machinery by this sometimes superabundant sympathy. Even genius errs, even instinct may be mistaken. Take the present case. My learned opponent would be acting strictly within her duty by bringing this case before you to ask for your decision. A man would do that. A casehardened lawyer like myself would do that. But a man would take it for granted his client was wrong, if he were beaten. Perhaps my learned opponent will do the same thing. But if she does I shall be mistaken. In all her subsequent career, which will be marked by more generosity, charity, and enthusiasm than can now be boasted of by any man at the bar, she never will believe that the verdict which I am asking you to give was just to Mrs. Stiles. But she will be wrong. Right in a hundred other cases, perhaps,--let that stand for the proportion, if you will,--but wrong in this. And nothing but her misapplied sympathy and tenderness of heart could have lent her the vigor and earnestness which she has displayed to-day. "Now, gentlemen, one thing more." "That'll fetch 'em," said the dark man decidedly. "Oh," moaned Mrs. Stiles, half aloud, "why didn't Mrs. Tarbell let me accept that there compromise?" "Compromise?" said the dark man quickly. "Why, are you Mrs. Stiles?" "Yes," said Mrs. Stiles, drawing back in great alarm. "And you say you were offered a compromise by the railway company which your lawyer didn't let you accept?" said the dark man, in lower tones. "Why, yes," said Mrs. Stiles hesitatingly. The dark man struck his hand against the window-seat. "Well, upon my word!" said he. "Do you think I ought to have took it?" said poor Mrs. Stiles, in a stifled voice.