"Yes, my friend," thought Lydia, "that's the way it's done. I wonder how many times you've skidded your own car to know so much about it." "This procedure," O'Bannon's voice continued, "which is always a somewhat reckless performance, was in this case criminal. With the officer known to be overlapping her car on the left, she might as well have picked up her car and struck him with it. Her car did so strike him, smashing his motorcycle to bits and causing the hideous injuries of which he died within a few hours." Lydia closed her eyes. She saw that mass of bloodstained khaki and steel lying in the road and heard her own footsteps beating on the macadam. "The People will prove that the defendant was committing a misdemeanor at the time. By Section 1950 of the Penal Law it is a misdemeanor to render the highways dangerous or to render a considerable number of persons insecure in life. The defendant in approaching the village of Wide Plains along a highway on which there were buildings and people at a rate of forty miles an hour was so endangering life. Gentlemen, there never was a simpler case as to law and fact than this one." Lydia glanced at Wiley under her lashes. It seemed to her that O'Bannon's manner was almost perfect. She believed he had already captured the jury, but she could read nothing of Wiley's opinion in his expression. He rose more leisurely, more conversational in manner. The defense would show, he said--and his tone seemed to add "without the least difficulty"--that the motorcycle of the unfortunate young policeman had skidded and struck the automobile of the defendant, causing, to the deep chagrin of the defendant, the death of that gallant young hero. They would show that the defendant was not committing a misdemeanor at the time, for to attain a speed of twenty-five or thirty miles on a lonely road was not even violating the speed law, as everyone who owned a car knew very well. As for the indictment of manslaughter in the first degree, really--Wiley's manner seemed to say that he knew a joke was a joke, and that he had as much sense of humor as most men, but when it came to manslaughter in the first degree--"a crime, gentlemen, for which a prison sentence of twenty years may be imposed--twenty years, gentlemen." He had never in a long experience at the bar heard of a bill being found at once so spectacular and so completely at variance with the law. The defense would show them that if they followed the recommendation of his learned young friend, the district attorney, to consider the facts and the law----