"Well, who put up your May-polo?"
"How can I know, your honor?"
"Didn't you drop the rope out of the dormer-window to tie it with?"
"No, your honor."
"And don't you know who is your sweetheart?"
Eva began to weep aloud. It was dreadful to deny; and yet she could not confess it. In America such a question would have had no other result than a reprimand from the bench to the counsel putting it. But so defenceless is the condition of parties and witnesses where justice hides in corners, that the judge even went further, and said,--
"It's no use to deny it: Mat is your sweetheart, and you're going to get married very soon."
Eva remembered that four weeks later they intended to ask that same court for permission to get married,--an indispensable formula under the code of that happy country. If she denied it now, she thought they would refuse to give her the "papers" and the "acceptance," and, besides, it was against her conscience to say "No." Her heart beat quickly; a certain feeling of pride arose within her; a consciousness of superiority to all the ills that flesh is heir to pervaded her being: she forgot the papers and the judge, and only thought of Mat. The last tear dropped from her lids; her eyes brightened; she arose quickly, looked around as if in triumph, and said, "Yes: I'll never have any one but him."
"So Mat put up your May-pole?"
"It may be, but of course I couldn't be by, and that night I was----" Here the tears choked her utterance again. It was well for the poor girl that she held her hands before her eyes, and could not see the smiles of the men of justice.