"For the last ten years, your honor, this man, Abner Barrow, has been
serving a term of imprisonment in the State penitentiary; I ask you to
send him back there again for the remainder of his life. It will be
the better place for him, and we will be happier in knowing we have
done our duty in placing him there. Abe Barrow is out of date. He has
missed step with the march of progress, and has been out of step for
ten years, and it is best for all that he should remain out of it
until he, who has sent nine other men unprepared to meet their God--"

"He is not on trial for the murder of nine men," interrupted Colonel
Stogart, springing from his chair, "but for the justifiable killing of
one, and I demand, your honor, that--"

"--has sent nine other men to meet their Maker," continued the
District Attorney, "meets with the awful judgment of a higher court
than this."

Colonel Stogart smiled scornfully at the platitude, and sat down with
an expressive shrug; but no one noticed him.

The District Attorney raised his arm and faced the court-room. "It
cannot be said of _us_," he cried, "that we have sat idle in the
market-place. We have advanced and advanced in the last ten years,
until we have reached the very foremost place with civilized people.
This Rip Van Winkle of the past returns to find a city where he left a
prairie town, a bank where he spun his roulette wheel, this
magnificent court-house instead of a vigilance committee. And what is
his part in this new court-house, which to-day, for the first time,
throws open its doors to protect the just and to punish the unjust?