AT the time of the trial the Tombs still wore its Egyptian frown, justice was barbarously vindicated in the quadrangle, Croker was Coroner, and the New Spirit had not yet stalked in Centre Street.

But to begin at the beginning of the story it is necessary to go back to the day when Old Curry returned from the Supreme Court chambers.

Yes, Curry was an old-timer. The fashion of his clothes –the ample trousers, the long-tailed coat, the heavy cravat, only less antique than a stock, the rolling collar, the dusty, broad-brimmed silk hat that rested like Webster’s squarely upon his wrinkled temples– quickly proclaimed his detachment from the modern mode.

So that the figure of Old Curry as it moved up Centre Street was in a marked way different from any other likely to be seen on that thoroughfare. With head bowed, the lank lawyer strode in an uncompromising line near the curb, his white hair fluttering, the skirt of his coat careering in the early April wind.

Turning into Leonard Street, Old Curry entered one of those middle-aged brick buildings that stood over against the grim facade of the Tombs. The neighborhood seemed to express a recollection of the dramas of the quadrangle, a consciousness of low company, a cynical expectation that the world would continue to be wicked. Legal beasts of prey prowled in the shadows, and Old Curry passed among them as one who should gather his toga from the touch of the unclean.

Yet the building in which Curry had his office seemed to withdraw, like Curry himself, from the meanness of the surroundings. The little bird store off the street was always chirpy. Even on Hangman’s Day, when the signal man of the railroad building flashed the message that passed by way of the shot tower down town to the newspaper offices in Park Row, and a murmur in the street echoed the falling of the drop, the birds would break into a merry peal until the parrot, a peevish and profane bird (the records are quite agreed about him), would be startled into speechless indignation.

Old Curry mounted the narrow stair upon which his step fell with the nervous emphasis of energetic old age. At the top of the flight a tin sign labeled the law offices of D. and M. J. Curry.

Martin Curry looked up from his desk as his father came in, then went on with his writing. In the corner was a thin boy with red hair who was laboriously devising shorthand characters on the margin of a subpœna.

“ Got that transcript ? ” asked Old Curry of the boy.

“ Yes, sir.”

The old man sat down at his desk and drew a package of papers from his pocket.

“ Tanner! ” called Martin, “ take this over to Dolan’s.”

The boy began to gather himself out of the old chair.

“ Come, come ! ” growled Martin irritably. “ If you ever expect to be stenographer of the Supreme Court you ’ll have to get a move on you.” And the boy disappeared hurriedly, producing a sound beyond the door as of falling downstairs.

The musty office grew quiet again. The noises from the street were punctuated by an occasional scream from the parrot in the bird store. Old Curry arose and bestowed his papers in the yellow-brown safe.

“ Johnny Kells has been getting into a row,” he remarked.

“ Yes,” returned Martin, “ and Sandler ’s been in here and retained us.”

“The deuce he has!” snorted the old man.

“ And he ’s mad as thunder ; wants blood. It’s about Sandler’s mule, and Kells ”–

“ Martin,” interrupted the father, “ we can’t take the prosecution.”

“ What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that I’ve just agreed to look after Kells –not half an hour ago. That’s simple enough, is n’t it? ”

“ But I tell you that Sandler’s just been here –been in the office ; we ’ve talked the thing over, and he ’s left a retainer.”

“ I can’t help that,” declared the senior partner sternly, “ I ’ve passed my word.”

“ So have I,” the son fretfully persisted, “ and talked over the whole case,– taken the price from him, and promised to be at Slote’s in the morning when the case is called.”

Old Curry made an impatient gesture. “ I suppose we could n’t drop Sandler, could we ? ” he demanded.

“ Yes, I suppose we could if there was any sense in it. But we have n’t anything against Sandler. He’s been in here and acted square with us, and I can’t see what we should drop him for. That’s the way it stands with me. I’d like to see this office run on business principles.”

“Would you?” thundered the old man. “ Well, keep it up. Have all the business principles you want. But let me tell you that I’m going to represent Johnny Kells.”

Young Curry looked up inflexibly, but with an uneasy glitter in his eye. “ I don’t suppose I can prevent you.”

“ And if Sandler is to be represented from this office you ’ll have to do it on your own account.”

“ I could do it,” admitted Martin in a hard tone. “If it had to be that way I could manage it. The crowd over there would n’t ask anything better. There’d be a fine laugh all round.”

“ If you ’re at all sensitive about that,” delivered Old Curry from his desk, “ there’s a way out! ”

Martin stood staring through the back window, from which he had a sordid and depressing prospect. He could hear the parrot swearing downstairs. The father made ready to leave the office for the day.

As Old Curry was going out Martin swung about and asked dryly, “ Is it the widder ? ”

But Old Curry slammed the door and almost knocked backward down the steps the future stenographer of the Supreme Court.

Curry the younger arrived at the office in the morning soon after Tanner had completed certain mystical passes with a feather duster which in the youth’s mind were associated with an inconsequent obligation.

Martin spent some minutes in study of the New Code of Criminal Procedure. Of late years consulting the authorities had been Martin’s particular duty. Old Curry’s eyes were not the good servants they once had been. Moreover the old man’s patience had been long since exhausted by the facility with which legislatures deface the noble monuments of law. In cross-examination the senior partner was a tower of strength, and in the summing up he worthily kept alive the traditions of the stalwart past. His citations were uncertain, and his temper uneven, but juries believed him, and judges remembered what he had been. If Martin sometimes winced at his father’s looser technique, he had seen juries quail and the bench unbend. He admired his father.

Having finished his examination of the Code, Martin placed the volume on a corner of his father’s table. Just then Old Curry came in.

The old man opened and read his letters without saying a word. He picked up the Code and peered at it for a time. Then he wheeled about in his chair.

“ Are you still for Sandler ? ” he asked, with an unconciliatory lightness.

Martin was actually in no mood to be obstructive, could he have seen his way out. But no shadow of compromise appeared in his father’s tone, and at that moment the door swung open.

“ Mornin’,” said a huge, round-shouldered man with short, bristling gray hair, who loomed against the dark background of the passage.

“ Come in,” motioned Martin. “ I ’ll be ready in a minute.”

Sandler had already lumbered in. “ I suppose it’s about time t’ git across the way,” he said. “ How are yer, Dan,” he added on seeing the senior partner, and continued, with the effect of addressing the two of them, “ There’s one thing I forgot t’ tell yer about this mule ”–

“ I guess you’d better wait till I get out of here,” interrupted Old Curry.

“You needn’t tear yourself away,” observed Martin, but Old Curry had gone.

Sandler looked puzzled. “ What’s the matter with the old man ?”

“ The trouble with him,” answered Martin, “ is that he’s going to represent the other side.”

“ Well, I ’ll be –You don’t mean ”–

“ Y”es, I do. I mean just that. Johnny Kells has got him.”

Plainly Sandler was dazed as they descended to the street. On the steps of the Tombs he remarked grimly, “ I can’t see what Dan’s gone back on me for.”

They entered the shadow of the gray Egyptian corridor, and turned to the right into the police court, passed between the spectators’ benches, and took seats within the inclosure. Behind the desk at the end of the room sat Justice Slote, who at this moment was asking a woman in a group before the railing, “ Would you like me to hang him, madam ? ”

Presently Slote, whose mustache was dyed a sinister bluish black, called, « John Kells.”

Four men stepped to the bar : Kells, a short, thick-set, alert man, with an effect of restrained pugnacity ; the elder Curry; Martin, a diminished version of his father; big Sandler towering over all.

“ Well,” said Slote taking up the papers, “ what seems to be the trouble ? . . . 4 detain with intent to defraud deponent . . . one mule of the value of forty dollars.’. . . Kells, you are charged with grand larceny.”

“ To which lie pleads not guilty,” answered Old Curry quietly, adding, “ and if Your Honor please, I must move to dismiss the complaint on the ground that it describes no crime, the complainant’s redress, if any, being obtainable by civil action.”

“ The gentleman has evidently forgotten,” Martin spoke up with some pressure of quiet, “ that provision of the New Code which describes detention as larceny, for which the defendant is criminally liable. Your Honor will see by the papers ”–

Justice Slote laid down his pen. “ You gentlemen don’t seem to be very well agreed in this matter.”

“ Perhaps,” suggested Martin with a strained smile, “Your Honor doesn’t understand that we appear on opposite sides in this case.”

“I –I see,” said Slote, with signs of not being at all clear. “On opposite sides.” He had known the Currys for twenty years, and the situation naturally struck him as peculiar. He indicated by his later manner that it also struck him as amusing. In the matter of Old Curry’s motion, he remarked that it was denied. The New Code distinctly characterized such detention as larceny.

Old Curry shrugged his lofty shoulders, and seemed about to speak, when Slote pushed forward an open copy of the Code, decorated with crosses, index fingers, and other marginal aids.

The old lawyer, without looking at the book or at his son, remarked casually, “ I understand there is some doubt as to the value of this mule.”

“ There ain’t no doubt about it,” broke in Sandler; but young Curry, subduing his client, very deliberately moved to amend the complaint so that it might read “ twenty-four dollars,” and Old Curry grinned under his bristles.

The change made the charge one of petty larceny, and sent the case to Special Sessions instead of to the Grand Jury in the County Court. Martin had no heart for the ordeal of the County Court. “ I ’d rather pay you the difference myself,” he afterward growled to Sandler.

It was thus that the case of The People vs. Kells came to trial in the adjoining chamber of the Tombs two days later, –came to trial with the father on one side and the son on the other ; with Sandler, big and fierce to the fore, and Johnny Kells defiantly amiable first to last.

They called it a memorable day in that Egyptian cavern (the Bridge of Sighs opening on the left) not alone for the trial itself, –which was, after all, but a short affair, –but for the audience it evoked. Four aldermen had come in with Supervisor Jo Budd ; and the Dolan boys. Under Sheriff Shane shuffled through the door after Wun Lung the Chinese interpreter, tossing the last of a cigar behind the rear benches. Here, too, was Coroner Croker, and the great criminal lawyer Stenthorne himself.

It was not remarkable that Malsted, fattest of the three magistrates who occupied the bench, should awaken from his doze and mutter to Corwin, “ What’s Stenny doin’ here ? ”

“ Dunno,” returned Corwin, “ unless to see the fun in the Kells case.”

After it was over, word went about that the Mayor and the District Attorney had been seated in the outer crowd.

At all events the world seemed to have learned that Old Curry and his son were to fight a case in the Special Sessions. The place would hold no more. Even the corridor creaked with the would-be spectators, so that it was a momentous matter for Old Curry to get in and to make a path for the Widow Kells, who was a resplendent person that day, her black silk rustling richly as she struggled to her seat within the rail, her tumultuous bonnet shimmering gayly in the grim place.

Big Sandler made a significant grimace when he saw the widow come in, and Old Curry before her making a path. As for Martin Curry, he had no stomach for the business from that moment, though a high rebellion of battered pride remained with him to the end.

The justices had no disposition to hurry matters. The mere situation, quite without regard to the details, was too entertaining. Martin Curry knew this so well that he became nervously eager to finish the affair before it had begun, and he was as curt in his examination of big Sandler as if that large person had been a hostile witness. Moreover he was sure of his case. The ruling of the examining justice had fortified him. Detention was larceny. There was the end of the matter. He had an angry pity for the old man, who must come to the end of his rope before long.

Sandler told the simple story of the mule ; of its purchase from Kells ; of his later finding of the animal in Kells’s stable near the Bend ; of his demand for the delivery of the mule, a demand made in peaceable terms; of Kells’s outrageous “ strike ” for money, and his own indignant refusal to pay the same ; of Kells’s criminal withholding of the mule to the present hour.

Old Curry arose in great pomp for the cross-examination. He was as little in haste as the Court itself. Yet his questions were few. Sandler admitted his ignorance of the precise manner in which the mule came to be in Kells’s stable. He admitted that Kells’s demand for money was in the form of a bill for feed. But the price –two dollars –was exorbitant and ridiculous.

“ Did you see the mule in Kells’s stable ? ” asked Old Curry.

“ I did.”

“How did he look?”

“ Look ? ” –Sandler stared.

“ Did he look as if he had been well fed ? ”

“ I’m no judge of looks,” retorted Sandler, “ or I would n’t have bought him.”

“ He wore a cheerful appearance ? ”

“ I dunno. I would n’t call him a cheerful mule, not by a good sight. He ’s an ugly beast. Kells knows that. If I’d known what I know now ”–

“Never mind the ‘ ifs,’ Mr. Sandler. I’m asking you whether the mule looked as if he had been abundantly fed. He was n’t emaciated, was he ? ”

“ He looked just as ugly as usual,” snorted Sandler.

“ Very well. Let me ask you –do you know how much that mule can eat in fifteen hours ? ”

“ No.”

“ You never happened to give him all he could eat, did you ? ”

Martin was on his feet expostulating. “ If Your Honors please, are we to be insulted ? I submit that the question is grossly irrelevant.”

Old Curry frowned, and the Court asked the purpose of the question.

“ My purpose, if the Court please, is to show that this man Sandler ”–

“ I object to counsel’s phrase! ” cried Martin Curry. “It is highly improper.”

The old man nodded. “ Counsel withdraws the phrase. My purpose is to show that the complainant so far underestimated the needs –if Your Honors choose, the capacity –of this mule that he (the mule) was in danger of slow starvation, and that his condition, as Your Honors will soon learn, led directly to the circumstances out of which this charge arises.” The Court doubted, but admitted the testimony –on probation.

Sandler, eager to answer, then declared that he had given the mule nearly twice the quantity of feed he gave his horse.

“Only twice?” asked Old Curry impressively.

“Nobody could give that mule all he wanted,” blurted Sandler.

“ You admit that you gave him less than he wanted ? ”

“ I gave him a proper amount,” declared Sandler. “ I think I understand my business.”

“ That may be, my friend,” murmured the questioner solemnly, “ but you don’t understand this mule. That is the sad feature of the situation, as I shall show the Court later on. And I shall not ask you another question.”

A little man with a big voice, who had accompanied Sandler to Kells’s stable, testified to recognizing the mule there detained as the mule Sandler had owned for five days.

Old Curry fixed the little man with his cavernous eyes.

“ How did the mule look ? ”

“ He wasn’t lookin’ that I know.”

“ Didn’t he wear the appearance of a well-fed beast ? ”

“He was n’t wearin’ nothin’ just then.”

Corwin suppressed the general titter with a bang of the gavel. A vast dyed mustache saved his own dignity.

Old Curry’s lips twitched. “ He did n’t look hungry, did he ? ”

“ I never seen him look no other way,” announced the witness, and Corwin brought down the gavel once more.

“ Did you ever see him while Kells owned him?”

“ No.”

“You mean, then, that he has always looked hungry since Sandler has owned him ? ”

“ I object! ” shouted Martin. “ The Court will decide what the witness means.”

The objection was sustained, Old Curry waved his hand, the little man stepped down, and the case for the prosecution was closed.

“And now, if Your Honors please,” said Old Curry, “ deferring a motion to dismiss this extraordinary complaint, I will place before Your Honors, with great brevity, certain facts which in justice to the defendant should be made known. I call as a first witness Mrs. Kells.”

All eyes were upon the widow as she arose from her seat by the rail and came forward in her resplendent raiment to the witness chair. The fat policeman who held the Bible opened the volume as he administered the oath, and gallantly submitted to the widow’s lips an unsoiled page within.

Mrs. Kells was not yet forty-five, and still capable, as the day proved, of making a potent impression.

“ Mrs. Kells,” began Old Curry, a new note in his voice, “please tell the Court what you saw on the afternoon of April 7.”

The widow complied, with animation. What she saw –from the second-story window of her house –was the advent of the mule, the mule her son had sold to Sandler five days before. The beast was strolling down from Mulberry Street, –just as he used to when Kells had left the truck at the shed, –and when he came to the alley, turned in and went straight to the old stall in the stable.

“ I will ask you,” resumed Old Curry, “ whether any one urged, guided, called, or constrained the mule to take this step ? ”

“ Not a soul,” answered Mrs. Kells, a trifle abashed by some of the words.

“ That is all.”

Martin arose with an irritated stiffness.

“ Will you kindly inform me, Mrs. Kells, where you were sitting when you saw this mule ? ”

“ In my own rooms.”

“ And you could see what happened at the side of the house ? ” “ Sure! I sat by the window that opens on the alley, and I says, ‘ Holy saints! if there ain’t Johnny’s mule going back to his old stall! ’ ”

“ To whom did you make that remark ? ”

At this the widow lost a trifle of her radiant assurance, and Old Curry impressively protested.

“I had company at the time,” defiantly volunteered the widow.

“ Of course, madam, if you have any reason ” –began Martin.

“I withdraw my objection!” thundered the father. “You will answer counsel’s question.”

“ I do not desire it,” insisted Martin.

“ But I do.” Daniel Curry tapped the table with his fist. “ Answer him, madam. Who was present ? ”

The widow snickered becomingly. “ Mr. Curry.”

Corwin smote the desk, and when silence was restored, “You mean,” said the Justice, “ counsel for the defendant ? ”

“Yes, sir. He had just called.”

“I see,” mused Martin, with an icy evenness, “ the mule and the gentleman for the defense.”

“ Keep to your case,” admonished Corwin sharply.

“ Begging Your Honor’s pardon,” interposed Old Curry, “ that is impossible. The gentleman has no case.”

“ My opponent may change his mind,” retorted Martin.

There were certain other perfunctory questions by the defense, and the widow, with restored radiance, left the stand.

“ John Kells,” called the accused’s counsel, and Johnny bristled to the front, eager to tell how he found the mule in the stall, –found him looking wasted for want of food (objection), with a famished look in his face (objection) ; how he fed him and fed him, and in the morning doubled his allowance; how Sandler came with rough insinuations (objection– “ Give his words, sir ! ”) and wanted to take the mule without paying the bill for feed and care, a thing which he could n’t have done if he (Sandler) had been eight feet high.

“ You did n’t steal this mule ? ”

“The mule did it himself.”

“You are ready to give him up when the bill is paid ?”

“ Y’es –paid up to the present time.”

“ Of course –of course,” nodded Old Curry. “ Quite right. By the way, this mule is a good feeder ? ”

“You can’t fill him. That’s one of the reasons ”–

“ Never mind,” interposed Old Curry, but Martin added, –“ why you got rid of him.”

“ But since he had come back,” and Old Curry raised his hand, “ since he had come back, half starved, you felt a humanitarian impulse to give him all he wanted ? ”

“ i did.”

“ Not to mention,” added Martin, “ an impulse to feloniously withhold him from the custody of the owner.”

Old Curry flared in a way to suggest that his rather mellow manner had its limits. The widow and all the world were looking on.

“ Drivel! ” he said.

The cross-examination of Kells was brief, the old man having broken in with, “ We admit possession. The mule is still with us.” The case seemed to be closed, when Old Curry arose, and remarking, “ I call myself as a witness,” took the stand, solemnly affirmed, and deposed: —

“ I called on Mrs. Kells on the afternoon of April 7. I was sitting near the middle of the room when Mrs. Kells, who sat near the window opening on the alley, said ”–

“ I object,” snapped Martin. “ Neither the complainant nor the defendant was present. Remarks between these witnesses are entirely beside the issue.”

“ The witness may state the remark,” said Corwin. “ Counsel for the prosecution himself brought out the remark which the witness undertakes to corroborate.”

Old Curry smiled. “ 1 Holy saints !’ Mrs. Kells said, 1 if there ain’t Johnny’s mule going back to his old stall! ’ ”

With this Old Curry turned to his son. “ Cross-examine.”

Martin looked surly. “ You did n’t see this mule ? ”

“No.”

“ You did n’t participate in the– acquisition ? ”

“No.”

“ Your call, then, was not in relation to the matter at issue ? ”

Old Curry struggled to reconcile a smile and a frown. “ It was in relation to quite another matter,” and for some reason every one who could do so decently scrutinized the widow. The widow blushed like a girl.

But it was Old Curry’s summing up that introduced the most interesting incident of the case. In a summing up Old Curry was quite at his best. Martin might wince at his father’s citations, but he could not escape an emotion of pride in the venerable lawyer’s slashing eloquence, an eloquence not to be quenched or diminished by the insignificance of his theme. Martin had become content to watch prejudice wilt under the hot earnestness of his towering parent, to finger the statutes, to book-mark the law and the records in readiness to the veined and leathery fingers reached forth in the crisis of argument. The father was the Voice. The son was the Hand.

Many a spectator in the courtroom that day remembered the triumphs of Old Curry’s earlier days, –before and after he was District Attorney. Old Curry knew that these spectators were in hearing. He also remembered at every moment that the widow was there.

It was the widow, perhaps, more than any other who helped him to forget that the issue was trivial, the scene tawdry, the immediate situation awkward, and that the Court was to be suspected of a grin. His review of the testimony was touched with a scathing humor. He characterized the complaint as malicious, the complainant as hot-headed, the prosecution in general as a blunder. He sent a fine storm of words swirling about the heads of Sandler and the younger Curry.

With a quaver in his voice Old Curry rose to the top of his appeal: —

“ And Your Honors will be informed by my distinguished opponent that the law puts a condemnatory construction upon our conduct in the matter of this mule ; that the matter is not one of civil recourse, but of criminal import; that our detention is larceny in the full meaning of the law. The New Code”–

Old Curry’s nervous fingers flickered over the table. He lowered his look to scan the space before him. Martin, sitting in sullen profile, saw the movement in the corner of his eye, and caught himself together for a resentful second.

The Voice, under the weight of long habit, had turned to the Hand. The Hand was not there.

At the close of this moment Martin relaxed, turned slightly, and quietly pushed across the table the open and labeled Code.

There was another second, or less, of pause, in which Old Curry’s eyes shifted and his fingers halted. Then his head went up.

“ I will not weary the Court with citations. Your Honors are entirely familiar with the new codifications, with the new-fangled equivocations in the statutory laws. These flippant intrusions upon the temple of jurisprudence do not, I rejoice to say, invalidate the fundamental principles of justice and good practice, nor those older and wiser statutes under which our peace is preserved and the stability of our property is assured. I call Your Honors’ attention to the fact that in 1867 an act was passed in this state under which we take our stand, and by which the absolute integrity of our position is made evident. This act, so familiar that we require no book-marks nor page numbers to recall it, states explicitly the status of those who give asylum to strayed beasts, since it declares, with no modern evasions, that ‘such person may have a lien upon such beasts, by reason of their so coming upon his land, for his reasonable charges for keeping them and all fees and costs made thereon, and he may keep such beasts until such charges, fees, and costs are paid, or until such lien is foreclosed.’ ”

Old Curry gave a sonorous ring to the words. “ And this statute, Your Honors, is still on our books to confute and confound the quibblers and quarrelers who bolster their effrontery with the rickety scaffolding of new codes and sinister schemes of personal revenge. I leave this matter with Your Honors, entirely assured that my client, who has been subjected to an infamous imputation, will receive the vindication of an honorable acquittal.”

The counsel for the defense sank into his chair amid an approving murmur, and young Curry, who had the last word, arose to say it. He said it lamely, fumbling with his narrative, protesting awkwardly against the intrusion of “ antiquated statutes,” and the substitution of vociferous abuse for legitimate analysis. It was of no use. He could acquire no heat. He was discomforted and acutely conscious of an incredulous audience.

He sat down amid silence. The justices were already parleying in whispers. He knew what was coming and turned his head away.

“ Dismissed,” remarked Corwin quietly, as if reading his own entry on the papers.

There was a stir of satisfaction, and Old Curry rose up in a great glow, buttoning his long coat. Martin and Sandler were already at the green gate.

The crowd made way for Old Curry and Mrs. Kells. Near the outer door father and son came shoulder to shoulder.

“ It was the widder ! ” said Old Curry.

Alexander Black.