eel-spearing in Harlow's Creek; and there was other circumstantial evidence.

Mr. Clark, the president of the bank, had won the sympathy of every one by the modest way in which, with his eye-glasses in his hand, he had testified to the particulars of the loss which had left him penniless, and had ruined others whose little all was in his hands. And then in reply to the formal question, he had testified, amid roars of laughter from the court-room, that it was not he who robbed the safe. At this, even the judge and Wood's lawyer had not restrained a smile.

This had left the guilt with Wood. His lawyer, an inexperienced young attorney,—who had done more or less business for the bank and would hardly have ventured to defend this case but that the president had kindly expressed his entire willingness that he should do so,—had, of course, not thought it worth while to cross-examine Mr. Clark, and had directed his whole argument against the theory that the safe had been opened with a key, and not by strangers. But he had felt all through that, as a man politely remarked to him when he finished, he was only butting his "head ag'in a stone wall."

And while he was arguing, a jolly-looking old lawyer had written, in the fly-leaf of a law-book on his knee, and had passed with a wink to a young man near him who had that very morning been admitted to the bar, these lines:—

The district-attorney had not thought it worth while to expend much strength upon his closing argument; but being a jovial stump-speaker, of a wide reputation within narrow limits, he had not been able to refrain from making merry over Wood's statement that the basket which he had been seen bearing home, on the eventful night, was a basket of eels.

"Fine eels those, gentlemen! We have seen gold-fish and silver-fish, but golden eels are first discovered by this defendant The apostle, in Holy Writ, caught a fish with a coin in its mouth; but this man leaves the apostle in the dim distance when he finds eels that are all money. No storied fisherman of Bagdad, catching enchanted princes disguised as fishes in the sea, ever hooked such a treasure as this defendant hooked when he hooked that basket of eels! [Rustling appreciation of the jest among the jury.] If a squirming, twisting, winding, wriggling eel, gentlemen, can be said at any given moment to have a back, we may distinguish this new-found species as the greenback eel. It is a common saying that no man can hold an eel and remain a Christian. I should like to have viewed the pious equanimity of this good man when he laid his hands on that whole bed of eels. In happy, barefoot boyhood, gentlemen, we used to find mud-turtles marked with initials or devices cut in their shells; but what must have been our friend's surprise to find, in the muddy bed of Harlow's Creek, eels marked with a steel-engraving of the landing of Columbus and the signature of the Register of the Treasury! I hear that a corporation is now being formed by the title of The Harlow's Creek Greenback National Bank-bill Eel-fishing Company, to follow up, with seines and spears, our worthy friend's discovery! I learn that the news of this rich placer has spread to the golden mountains of the West, and that the exhausted intellects which have been reduced to such names for their mines as 'The Tombstone,' 'The Red Dog,' the 'Mrs. E. J. Parkhurst,' are likely now to flood us with prospectuses of the 'Eel Mine,' 'The Flat Eel,' 'The Double Eel,' and then, when they get ready to burst upon confiding friends, 'The Consolidated Eels.'"

It takes but little to make a school or a court-room laugh, and the speech had appeared to give a good deal of amusement to the listeners.

To all?

Did it amuse that man who sat, with folded arms, harsh and rigid, at the dock? Did it divert that white-faced woman, cowering in a corner, listening as in a dream?

The judge now charged the jury briefly. It was unnecessary for him, he said, to recapitulate evidence of so simple a character. The chief question for the jury was as to the credibility of the witnesses. If the witnesses for the prosecution were truthful and were not mistaken, the inference of guilt seemed inevitable; this the defendant's counsel had conceded. The defendant had proved a good reputation; upon that point there was only this to be said: that, while such evidence was entitled to weight, yet, on the other hand, crimes involving a breach of trust could, from their very nature, be committed only by persons whose good reputations secured them positions of trust.

The jury-room had evidently not been furnished by a ring. It had a long table for debate, twelve hard chairs for repose, twelve spittoons for luxury, and a clock.

The jury sat in silence for a few moments, as old Captain Nourse, who had them in his keeping, and eyed them as if he was afraid that he might lose one of them in a crack and be held accountable on his bond, rattled away at the unruly lock. Looking at them then, you would have seen faces all of a New England cast but one. There was a tall, powerful negro called George Washington, a man well known in this county town, to which he had come, as driftwood from the storm of war, in '65. Some of the "boys" had heard him, in a great prayer-meeting in Washington—a city which he always spoke of as his "namesake"—at the time of the great review, say, in his strong voice, with that pathetic quaver in it: "Like as de parched an' weary traveller hangs his harp upon de winder, an' sighs for oysters in de desert, so I longs to res' my soul an' my foot in Mass'-chusetts;" and they were so delighted with him that they invited him on the spot to go home with them, and took up a collection to pay his fare; and so he was a public character. As for his occupation,—when the census-taker, with a wink to the boys in the store, had asked him what it was, he had said, in that same odd tone: "Putties up glass a little—whitewashes a little—" and, when the man had made a show of writing all that down, "preaches a little." He might have said, "preaches a big," for you could hear him half a mile away.

The foreman was a retired sea-captain. "Good cap'n—Cap'n Thomas," one of his neighbors had said of him. "Allers gits good ships—never hez to go huntin' 'round for a vessel. But it is astonishin' what differences they is! Now there 's Cap'n A. K. P. Bassett, down to the West Harbor. You let it git 'round that Cap'n A. K. P. is goin' off on a Chiny voyage, and you 'll see half a dozen old shays to once-t, hitched all along his fence of an arternoon, and wimmen inside the house, to git Cap'n A. K. P. to take their boys. But you let Cap'n Thomas give out that he wants boys, and he hez to glean 'em—from the poor-house, and from step-mothers, and where he can: the women knows! Still," he added, "Cap'n Thomas 's a good cap'n. I've nothin' to say ag'in him. He's smart!"

"Gentlemen," said the foreman, when the officer, at last, had securely locked them in, "shall we go through the formality of a ballot? If the case were a less serious one, we might have rendered a verdict in our seats."

"What's the use foolin' 'round ballotin'?" said a thick-set butcher. "Ain't we all o' one mind?"

"It is for you to say, gentlemen," said the foreman. "I should n't want to have it go abroad that we had not acted formally, if there was any one disposed to cavil."

"Mr. Speaker," said George Washington, rising and standing in the attitude of Webster, "I rises to appoint to order. We took ballast in de prior cases, and why make flesh of one man an' a fowl of another?"

"Very well," said the foreman, a trifle sharply; "'the longest way round is the shortest way home.'"

Twelve slips of paper were handed out, to be indorsed guilty, "for form." They were collected in a hat and the