“Oh, nothing much,” said Mr. Flournoy bitterly, “nothing much, except that if that poor little woman confesses--and I judge by the tone of her letter she's ready to do just that--anyway, everybody in town knows by now that she was the one that held up that joint of Magee's at the point of a shotgun--why the jurors, under their oaths, are bound to bring in a verdict of guilty, no matter how they may feel about it personally. Magee has about reached the point where he'd risk a jail term for himself to see her sentenced to the penitentiary. Judge Priest, I'd almost rather resign my office than be the means of seeing that poor, little, plucky woman convicted for doing the thing she has done.” “Wait a minute, son! Hold your hosses and wait a minute!” put in the judge. “Mebbe it won't be absolutely necessary fur you to up and resign so abrupt. Your valuable services are needed round this courthouse.” “What's that you say, Judge?” asked the young prosecutor, straightening his body out of the despondent curve into which he had looped it. “I says, wait a minute and don't be so proneful to jump at conclusions,” repeated and amplified the older man. “You go and jump at a conclusion that-away and you're liable to skeer the poor thing half to death. I've been lettin' you purceed ahead because I wanted to git your views on this little matter before I stuck my own paddle into the kittle. But now let's you and me see ef there ain't another side to this here proposition.” “I'm listening, your Honour,” said Flournoy, mystified but somehow cheered. “Well, then!” The judge raised his right arm ready to emphasise each point he made with a wide swing of the hand which held the pipe. “Under the laws of this state gamblin' in whatsoever form ain't permitted, recognised, countenanced nor suffered. That's so, ain't it, son? To be shore, the laws as they read at present sometimes seem insufficient somehow to prevent the same, and I hope to see them corrected in that reguard, but the intent is plain enough that, in the eye of the law, public gamblin' es sech does not go on anywhere within the confines of this commonwealth. You agree with me there, don't you?” “May it please the court, I agree with you there,” said Flournoy happily, beginning, he thought, to see the light breaking through. “All right then--so fur so good. Now then, sech bein' the situation, we may safely assume, I reckin, that within the purview and the written meanin' of the statute, gamblin'--common gamblin'--don't exist a-tall. It jest natchally ain't.