The lawyer in the case ahead of us was a new-comer, and strung it out
day after day to advertise himself, and yelled so you could hear him
over in the band-stand, to show his ability. Hen, all the time, was
getting more and more morbid, and forgot his temperance vows, and tried
to talk about the case to everybody. About half the time it would be a
juryman he would try to confide in, and this made trouble on account of
their thinking he was trying to influence them. One night Hen was owly
as sin, drinking with Walker Swayne from Pleasant Valley Township; and
when he cried into his beer because Fillmore Smythe was trying to
swindle him and blast his good name, Walker slapped him for approaching
him on a case he might be called to sit on. I put Hen to bed at the
Revere House, and told Mrs. Peters he'd been called home. She 'phoned
out to have him count the young turkeys, and the Swede second man had no
more sense than to say he had not been there, instead of placing him
where they had no telephone, as an honest hired man with any sprawl
would have done. You couldn't trust this Swede as far as you could throw
a thesaurus by the tail. I am not saying that he was corrupt; but he was
just thumb-hand-sided and lummoxy, and blurted, "Hae ain't bane hare"
into the transmitter with never a thought of the danger of telling the
truth. Mrs. Peters didn't know what to be distressed about, and just
because I'm paid the princely salary I get for saying nothing about such
things, she jumped on me like a duck on a June-bug.
When Hen and I went to McKenzie's office the night before our case came
up, the lawyer was worried. He asked us if we knew who was going to
testify against us.
"No," snapped Hen; "an' I don't care. Nobody ever saw me sign that note,
and it don't make any matter."
Then he went on to tell what great friends he and Judge Brockway used to
be, when the judge used to shoot prairie-chickens in Hen's stubble, and
Mrs. Peters cooked the chickens for the judge.
"Brockway thinks as much of me as a brother," said Hen. "He told me as
much when he was running for judge. He won't see me stuck."
This didn't seem to impress Judge McKenzie much. He still looked
worried, and said the other side had got every banker in town on their
side as handwriting experts.
"I don't like the looks of things," said he.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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