From behind the rail objections exploded like shell. But through the running fire of them Orr held his own, sandbagging the man with one charge after another, charge of theft, charge of forgery, but particularly of boasting the week before, in a Sixth avenue saloon where grooms and footmen congregate, that he could testify to anything that he was paid for. From ghastly Harris turned vermilion. The flush retreating left him livid. Had the fluted columns with their fabulous beasts fallen on him he could not have been more limp. At one question he swayed like an animal hit on the head. At another he hissed like a snake. There were times when he tried to hide from view. It was a curious example of the biter bit. "That's all," said Orr with tigerish cheerfulness at last. He had done him. He had given him the medicine. He had more in reserve. Peacock meanwhile had once jumped at Orr, his fist raised. Once he gave him the lie direct. Once he accused him of suborning. But Orr in sandbagging the witness with one hand, had another free for the prosecution. He was gluttonish, giving as good as was sent, very often better. The Recorder, dismayed at the slugging, protested. "A human being is on trial for his life. I cannot try a case where only counsel are heard." Immediately Orr supplied him with a diversion. One after another witness for the defense scaled the stand, sleuths from over seas, experts and servants. In his corner before them Orr prowled. At the witnesses for the prosecution he had roared, sometimes he had bounded at the Bar, sometimes when a move of his succeeded he raised his right hand and looked at it as though surprised that it was not blood red. But now with his own witnesses he was serene, entirely calm, refreshingly civil. That civility awoke in Peacock the hyena. The first witness Orr produced, a man who, as it afterward appeared, had had a rough and tumble with Harris that morning in the corridor, he partly devoured. What was left of him he sent to the Tombs. As fast as witnesses could be produced he ate them up. It was terrific. You could not help feeling that there are safer places than the witness stand in a murder trial, that you ran the risk of being killed yourself, talked to death if nothing worse. "Don't go at him like a common scold," Orr engagingly pleaded at one stage of the game. "Why browbeat and bully a witness as you do?" he expostulated at another. "That's all, my friend," he said to one witness, "and let me apologize for the District Attorney's remarks." From his tone and manner never in the world would you have thought him the man who, but a little before, had so thoroughly sandbagged Harris.