“She did,” said the lawyer. “I think she lost a little of her confidence, however, as the trial progressed. She appeared to be devoting nearly all of her energies to you. You, apparently, were the one who had to be subdued, if you will forgive the term. She is the cleverest, shrewdest young woman I've ever seen. She is the best judge of men that I've ever encountered--far and away better than I or any one connected with our office. When that jury was completed I realised, with a sort of shock, that it was she who selected it. She made but one mistake--and that was in you. There is where we were smarter than she. I knew that you would do the right thing by us, in spite of your very palpable efforts to get off. If there had been some one else in your place, Mr. Sampson, James Hildebrand would have been acquitted.” “Possibly,” said Sampson, with a sinking of the heart. He felt like a Judas! She had made but one mistake, and it was fatal! “As I was saying,” went on Wilks, blowing rings toward the ceiling, “women play thunder with us sometimes. A friend of mine from Chicago dined with me last night. He is in the State's Attorney's office out there and he's down here on business. You ought to hear him on the subject of women mixing up in criminal cases. He says it's fatal--if they're pretty and appealing. Nine times out of ten they have more nerve, more character and a good deal more intelligence than the average juryman, and Mr. Juror is like wax in their hands. Take a case they had out there last fall--the Brownley case--you read about it, perhaps. Young fellow from Louisiana got into bad company in Chicago, and went all wrong. Gambled and then had to rob his employers to get square with the world. His father and sister came up from New Orleans and made a fight for him. They got the best legal talent in town, and then little sister sat beside brother and petted him from time to time. A cinch! The jury was out an hour. Not guilty! See what I mean? And you remember the Paris case a year or two ago when the detectives nabbed a couple of international card sharks and bunco men after they had worked the Atlantic for two years straight without being landed? French juries tried 'em separately. One of them got five years and the other got off scot free. Why? Because his pretty young wife turned up and--well, you know the French! Woman is lovely in her place, but her place isn't in the court-room unless she favours the prosecution.” “They're like good-looking nurses,” said Sampson's friend. “They make a chap forget everything else.” “Same principle,” said Wilks. “Patients and juries are much the same. They require careful nursing.”