The efforts of the peacemakers were signally assisted by the sudden appearance of a squad of police coming on the run around the corner from Montgomery Street. As the guardians of order were strong of limb, and were armed with heavy clubs, they had exemplary success in quieting the refractory, and satisfying those whose appetite for fighting was still unsated. At the sight of the police, Parks took me by the arm and drew me quietly down the block and around the corner into Sansome Street. "What was the trouble about, and who was the old man?" I asked. "Why, that was Merwin," said Parks in a tone of surprise. "You ought to recollect him." At the name I remembered the quiet, dreamy old man of my visit to the House of Blazes, and recalled the history of his life-wreck which was wrapped up in the volumes of legal lore that went under the title of Merwin versus Bolton. "What had Merwin been doing to get the mob after him?" I asked. "To get the mob after him!" exclaimed Parks in great indignation. "To get the police after him, you mean." "The police!" I exclaimed in my turn. "Oh, he was the man under arrest, then?" "It was an outrage of arbitrary power," said Parks, flushing angrily, "and the people have shown what they think of it. He has been taken out of the hands of those petty tyrants, and it will be a long time before he falls into them again." "What was the charge?" I asked, at a loss to imagine what crime could have been committed by this inoffensive wreck of a man. "He was arrested," said Parks indignantly, "for exercising the right of free speech." "Free speech is rather an elastic term," I said. "What was he talking about?" "The only thing he knows anything about," said Parks. "That’s his case." "Well, it is a subject that might call out rather strong language, but I don’t see just how that could bring him afoul of the police." "Sir," cried Parks, "it could happen only through the exercise of arbitrary power. The point of the thing is that the Supreme Court this afternoon handed down its sixth decision in his suit against Bolton. The judgment against Bolton is reversed, and the case sent back for a new trial." "What a shame!" I said, remembering the justice of Merwin’s claim, the ruin of his life, and his long fight against the wealth and malignity of Peter Bolton. "It is outrageous!" exclaimed Parks vehemently; "as scandalous as the open sale of justice to the highest bidder. Those men should be dragged from the bench, and driven through the streets in a cart, with their price for rendering such a judgment placarded on their backs. The judges were bought and justice was sold." "No, no," I protested. "The men on the bench may be wrong-headed, small-minded, pettifogging, but not corrupt--believe me, not corrupt." Parks looked at me with a pitying shake of his head.