has a mortgage on your farm?"

"I can show, your Honour," Austen continued, when Mr. Billings had
finished his protest, "that this man was on his way to Riverside to pay
his quarterly instalment."

Mr. Bascom was not present at the afternoon session. Mr. Billings'
summing up was somewhat impassioned, and contained more quotations from
the "Book of Arguments." He regretted, he said, the obvious appeals to
prejudice against a railroad corporation that was honestly trying to do
its duty-yes, and more than its duty.

Misjudged, misused, even though friendless, it would continue to serve
the people. So noble, indeed, was the picture which Mr. Billings'
eloquence raised up that his voice shook with emotion as he finished.

In the opinion of many of the spectators Austen Vane had yet to learn the
art of oratory. He might with propriety have portrayed the suffering and
loss of the poor farmer who was his client; he merely quoted from the
doctor's testimony to the effect that Mr. Meader would never again be
able to do physical labour of the sort by which he had supported himself,
and ended up by calling the attention of the jury to the photographs and
plans of the crossing he had obtained two days after the accident,
requesting them to note the facts that the public highway, approaching
through a dense forest and underbrush at an angle of thirty-three
degrees, climbed the railroad embankment at that point, and a train could
not be seen until the horse was actually on the track.

The jury was out five minutes after the judge's charge, and gave Mr.
Zebulun Meader a verdict of six thousand dollars and costs,--a popular