"My friend," he remarked solemnly, taking the floor, "of course you want to do justice in this case. We have nothing against Mr. Brown at all. He is doubtless a very honest and efficient officer. But surely the good character of this defendant may well create a reasonable doubt—and the rest of us feel that it does."
"Sure! 'Course it does!" came from all sides. Mr. Brown's red-faced friend having escaped the salesman's wrath began to show somewhat less aggressiveness.
"I don't care a damn about Brown!" he assured them. "He can go to hell for all of me! But I don't see how you can acquit this feller when the evidence is uncontradicted that he told Brown he was a veterinary and treated his horse. I'd be violating my oath if I voted for acquittal after that testimony. I ain't going to commit perjury for nobody! I'd like to oblige you gentlemen, too, and vote your way, but I just can't with that evidence stickin' in my crop. If it wasn't for that—"
"He could 'a' treated the horse without doing it as a veterinary, just as Mr. Tutt said!" interjected the tall man.
"Good for you!" said the salesman, fully restored to equanimity. "You're gettin' intelligent. Serve on a few more juries—"
"But he said he was a veterinary," insisted Brown's friend. "How could he have treated the horse as anything else but as a veterinary when he said he was treating him as a veterinary?"
"Maybe he just thought he was doing it as a veterinary", commented the gloom in black. "He may have tried to do it as a veterinary and failed. In that case he didn't do it as a veterinary but just as a plain man. Get me?"
"No, I don't!" snorted the red-faced one. "That's all bull. He said he was a vet and he treated the horse as a vet and got five dollars for it."
"How do you know he did?" unexpectedly asked Bently.
"Because he said so himself. That was part of the conversation between Brown and Lowry," declared the obstinate summer friend of Brown. "If it wasn't for that—"