Though the defense had thirty peremptory challenges Mr. Tutt well knew
that Babson would sustain the prosecutor's objections for bias until the
jury box would contain the twelve automata personally selected by
O'Brien in advance from what Tutt called "the army of the gibbet." Yet
the old war horse outwardly maintained a calm and genial exterior,
betraying none of the apprehension which in fact existed beneath his
mask of professional composure. The court officer rapped sharply for
silence.

"Are you quite ready to proceed with the case?" inquired the judge with
a courtesy in which was ill concealed a leer of triumph.

"Yes, Your Honor," responded Mr. Tutt in velvet tones.

"Call the first talesman!"

The fight was on, the professional duel between traditional enemies, in
which the stake--a human life--was in truth the thing of least concern,
had begun. Yet no casual observer would have suspected the actual
significance of what was going on or the part that envy, malice,
uncharitableness, greed, selfishness and ambition were playing in it. He
would have seen merely a partially filled courtroom flooded with
sunshine from high windows, an attentive and dignified judge in a black
silk robe sitting upon a dais below which a white-haired clerk drew
little slips of paper from a wheel and summoned jurymen to a service
which outwardly bore no suggestion of a tragedy.

He would have seen a somewhat unprepossessing assistant district
attorney lounging in front of the jury box, taking apparently no great