Counsel for the Defense

Author of
“The Shears of Destiny,” “To Him That Hath,” “The Walking Delegate”
Frontispiece by Charles M. Chapman
Garden City New York DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1912
Copyright, 1911, 1912, by Leroy Scott All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian
“THRILLING WITH AN UNEXPECTED HOPE, KATHERINE ROSE AND TRIED TO KEEP HERSELF BEFORE THE EYES OF DOCTOR SHERMAN LIKE AN ACCUSING CONSCIENCE”
Katherine West. Dr. David West, her father. Arnold Bruce, editor of the Express . Harrison Blake, ex-lieutenant-governor. Mrs. Blake, his mother. “Blind Charlie” Peck, a political boss. Hosea Hollingsworth, an old attorney. Billy Harper, reporter on the Express . The Reverend Dr. Sherman, of the Wabash Avenue Church. Mrs. Sherman, his wife. Mrs. Rachel Gray, Katherine’s aunt. Roger Kennedy, prosecuting attorney. Judge Kellog. Mr. Brown, of the National Electric & Water Company. Mr. Manning, a detective. Elijah Stone, a detective.

The room was thick with dust and draped with ancient cobwebs. In one corner dismally reposed a literary junk heap—old magazines, broken-backed works of reference, novels once unanimously read but now unanimously forgotten. The desk was a helter-skelter of papers. One of the two chairs had its burst cane seat mended by an atlas of the world; and wherever any of the floor peered dimly through the general débris it showed a complexion of dark and ineradicable greasiness. Altogether, it was a room hopelessly unfit for human habitation; which is perhaps but an indirect manner of stating that it was the office of the editor of a successful newspaper.
Before a typewriter at a small table sat a bare-armed, solitary man. He was twenty-eight or thirty, abundantly endowed with bone and muscle, and with a face——But not to soil this early page with abusive terms, it will be sufficient to remark that whatever the Divine Sculptor had carved his countenance to portray, plainly there had been no thought of re-beautifying the earth with an Apollo. He was constructed not for grace, but powerful, tireless action; and there was something absurdly disproportionate between the small machine and the broad and hairy hands which so heavily belaboured its ladylike keys.