I looked at Gottlieb and Gottlieb looked at me. The trial had closed so suddenly that we were taken quite unawares and left wholly undetermined what to do. We had practically no evidence to offer on our behalf except our own denials of the testimony against us; and if once either of us took the stand we should open the door to a cross-examination at the hands of the district attorney of our entire lives. For this cross-examination he had been preparing for months; and I well knew that there was not a single shady transaction in which we had participated, not one attempt at blackmail, not a crooked defence that we had interposed that he had not investigated and stood prepared to question us about in detail. "What shall we do?" whispered Gottlieb nervously. "Do you want to take the stand?" "How can we?" I asked petulantly. "If we did we should be convicted --not for this but for every other thing we ever did in our lives. Let's take a chance and go to the jury on the case as it stands." After consulting with our counsel, the latter agreed that this was the best course to pursue; and so, rising, he informed the court that in his opinion no case had been made out against us and that we should, therefore, interpose no defence. This announcement caused a great stir in the court-room, and I could see by the faces of the jury that it was all up with us. I had already surrendered all hope of an acquittal and I looked upon the verdict of the jury as a mere formality. "Proceed, then, with the summing up," ordered the judge. "I wish the jury to take this case and finish it to-night." So, with that, our counsel began his argument in our behalf--a lame and halting effort it seemed to me, for all that we had paid him twenty-five thousand dollars for his services--pointing out how neither Dillingham nor Hawkins was worthy of belief, and how the case against us rested entirely upon their testimony and upon that of the clerk, who was an insignificant and unimportant witness injected simply for the sake of apparent corroboration. Faugh! I have heard Gottlieb make a better address to the jury a thousand times, and yet this man was supposed to be one of the best! Somehow throughout the trial he had seemed to me to be ill at ease and sick of his job, a mere puppet in the mummery going on about us; yet we had no choice but to let him continue his ill-concealed plea for mercy and his wretched rhetoric, until the judge stopped him and said that his time was up.