For all those weeks he had been haunted by a presence that always flitted out of his way; but now she was there, in the crowded court-room, and she greeted him with a slow, mirthless smile. It was Mary Fortune and he remembered all too well that time when she had told him he would lose. She had said he would lose because he had no case, and because he used money instead; but he knew from that smile she had other reasons for pronouncing his doom in advance. He had lawyers hired who told him, to the contrary, that he had a very good case--and Stoddard had spent money, too. Not openly, of course, but through his attorneys; but that was customary, it was always done. No, behind all her professions of respect for the judiciary and of worship for the law, she must know that the right sometimes failed. But behind that smile there was the absolute certainty that in some way he was certain to lose. He met her glance as he came into the court-room surrounded by a troop of his friends, surrounded by lawyers and mining experts and geologists who professed to see through the earth, and before her gaze he halted and blenched. There was another person there who regarded him coldly with a glance like a rapier thrust; but it was not of Stoddard he was afraid. It was of Mary Fortune, who had come out against him and who could hear through walls with her 'phone. What she knew might have helped him, but she was against him now--and she had told him in advance that he would lose. As Rimrock sat thinking, his eyes cast down and his mind far back in the past, a great blow was struck by the bailiff's mallet and the crowd rose up to its feet. A stern-faced judge, robed in the black cloak of his office, stepped out through the curtains behind the bench and as Rimrock stared the bailiff beckoned him sharply and he scrambled to his feet with the rest. "Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!" cried the bailiff in the words that echoed of the past. "The United States District Court is now in session!" He struck again as the judge took his seat and Rimrock sank down into his chair. But he had stood in respect to the majesty of the law and it was then that his hunch came back. For this was no appeal to an elected judge or the easily swayed emotions of a jury; it was an appeal to the cold, passionless mind of a man who considered nothing but the law.