It was not at the Eureka Garage, however, that I first met Bob Blake. Nine years before I there found him again, I had defended him in court--as it happens, successfully--on a charge of assault with intent to kill. That was almost my first case, and not far--thank heaven--from my last. Bob's defense, I remember, was assigned to me by a judge who had once borrowed fifty dollars from my father, which he never repaid; at least, not in cash. There are more convenient methods. True, my father was no longer living at the time I was appointed to defend Bob; but that is a detail. Susan was then four years old. I can't say I recall her, if I even laid eyes on her. But Mrs. Bob appeared as a witness, at my request--it was all but her final appearance, poor woman; she died of an embolism within a week--and I remember she told the court that a kinder husband and father than Bob had never existed. I remember, too, that the court pursed its lips and the gentlemen of the jury grinned approvingly, for Mrs. Bob could not easily conceal something very like the remains of a purple eye, which she attributed to hearing a suspicious noise one night down cellar, a sort of squeaking noise, and to falling over the cat on her tour of investigation--with various circumstantial _minutiæ_ of no present importance. The important thing is, that Bob went scot-free and was as nearly grateful as his temperament permitted. His assault--with an umbrella stand--had been upon a fellow reveller of no proved worth to the community, and perhaps this may have influenced the jury's unexpected verdict. Of Susan herself my first impression was gained at the Eureka Garage. Bob Blake, just then, was lying beneath my car, near which I hovered listening to his voluble but stereotyped profanity. He had lost the nut from a bolt, and, unduly constricted, sought it vainly, while his tongue followed the line of least resistance. I was marveling at the energy of his wrath and the poverty of his imagination, when I became aware of a small being beside me, in plaid calico. She had eager black eyes--terrier's eyes--in a white, whimsical little face. One very long and very thin black pigtail dangled over her left shoulder and down across her flat chest to her waist, where it was tied with a shoe string and ended lankly, without even the semblance of a curl. In her right hand she bore a full dinner pail, and with her left thumb she pointed toward the surging darkness beneath my car. "Say, mister, please," said the small being, "if I was to put this down, would you mind telling him his dinner's come?" "Not a bit," I responded. "Are you Bob's youngster?" "I'm Susan Blake," she answered; and very softly placed the dinner pail on the step of the car. "Why don't you wait and see your father?" I suggested. "He'll come up for air in a minute." "That's why I'm going now," said Susan.