"Graham, you have read your own sentence. You have confessed that you cannot lead an honest life. Your fault is that you will not work. There are a thousand farms within a hundred miles, where you could earn a livelihood for the asking. Your intelligence is of a high order. By ordinary application you could have risen far above your fellows. You are a dangerous criminal--all the more dangerous for your ability. You almost outwitted the jury, and conducted your own case more ably than nine out of ten lawyers would have done. You have ruined your own life, and cast away a pearl of price. You have my pity, but I cannot allow it to affect my duty. Graham, I sentence you to State Prison for ten years." The prisoner shivered, and covered his face with his hands. Then the officer clapped him on the shoulder and pushed him toward the door. "Gentlemen, you are excused." The Judge bowed to the jury. "Hear ye! Hear ye!" bawled the attendant: "all persons having business with Part One of the General Sessions of the Peace, held in and for the County of New York, may now depart. This Court stands adjourned until to-morrow morning at half past ten o'clock." In the Course of Justice "The Law is a sort of hocuspocus science that smiles in yer face while it picks yer pocket; and the glorious uncertainty of it is of mair use to the professors than the justice of it." I A trim, neatly dressed young man, holding in one of his carefully gloved hands a bamboo cane, sat upon a bench in Union Square one brilliant October morning some ten years ago. All about him swarms of excited sparrows chattered and fought among the yellow leaves. A last night's carnation languished in his button-hole, and his smoothly shaven lantern-jaw and high cheekbones suggested the type of upper Broadway and the Tenderloin. In spite of this, the general effect was not unpleasing, especially as his sparse curly hair, just turning gray at the temples, disclosed a forehead suggestive of more than usual intelligence in a face otherwise ordinary. A shadowy, inscrutable smile from time to time played upon his features, at one moment making them seem good-naturedly sympathetic, at another, sinister. The casual observer would have classed him as a student or actor. He was both, and more. From a large jewelry store across the way presently emerged a diminutive messenger-boy carrying a small, square bundle, and turned into Broadway. The man on the bench, known to his friends as "Supple Jim," rose unobtrusively to his feet. The apostle of Hermes stopped to buy a cent's worth of mucilaginous candy from the Italian on the corner, and then, whistling loudly, dawdled upon his way. The man followed, manœuvring for position, while the boy, now in the chewing stage and struggling violently, lingered to inspect a mechanical toy. The supple one accomplished a flank movement, approached, touched him on the shoulder, and displayed a silver badge beneath his coat.