His mother was not surprised. She had always known her Peter was a hero, and needed no “York papers” to teach her the fact. Still she read every line of the case, and of the subsequent crusade. She read Peter’s speech again and again, stopping to sob at intervals, and hugging the clipping to her bosom from time to time, as the best equivalent for Peter, while sobbing: “My boy, my darling boy.” Every one in the mill-town knew of it, and the clippings were passed round among Peter’s friends, beginning with the clergyman and ending with his school-boy companions. They all wondered why Peter had spoken so briefly. “If I could talk like that,” said a lawyer to the proud mother, “I’d have spoken for a couple of hours.” Mrs. Stirling herself wished it had been longer. Four columns of evidence, and only a little over a half column of speech! It couldn’t have taken him twenty minutes at the most. “Even the other lawyer, who had nothing to say but lies, took over a column to his speech. And his was printed close together, while that of Peter’s was spread out (_e.g._ solid and leaded) making the difference in length all the greater.” Mrs. Stirling wondered if there could be a conspiracy against her Peter, on the part of the Metropolitan press. She had promptly subscribed for a year to the New York paper which glorified Peter the most, supposing that from this time on his name would appear on the front page. When she found it did not and that it was not mentioned in the press and Health Board crusade against the other “swill-milk” dealers, she became convinced that there was some definite attempt to rob Peter of his due fame. “Why, Peter began it all,” she explained, “and now the papers and Health Board pretend it’s all their doings.” She wrote a letter to the editor of the paper—a letter which was passed round the office, and laughed over not a little by the staff. She never received an answer, nor did the paper give Peter the more attention because of it. Two days after the trial, Peter had another call from Dummer. “You handled that case in great style, Mr. Stirling,” he told Peter. “You know the ropes as well as far older men. You got just the right evidence out of your witnesses, and not a bit of superfluous rubbish. That’s the mistake most young men make. They bury their testimony in unessential details, I tell you, those two children were worth all the rest put together. Did you send them to the country on purpose to get that kind of evidence?” “No,” said Peter. “Well, every man in that jury was probably a father, and that child’s talk took right hold of them. Not but that your speech would have done the business. You were mighty clever in just telling what you saw, and not going into the testimony. You could safely trust the judge to do that. It was a great speech.” “Thank you,” said Peter.