"Why," he said, "my mother had been quite sick for a long time, and, to tempt her appetite, my father had journeyed 'way uptown and at vast expense bought her a bunch of wonderful white hot-house grapes. I remember she wouldn't eat them at first—just wanted to look at them—and my father hung them for her over the foot of the bed. Well, soon after he'd gone to business she fell asleep, leaving the grapes untouched. They tempted me, and I fell. I wanted to show off, I suppose, before my young friends in the street—there was a girl, Minnie Hopflekoppf, I think her name was, who'd passed me up for an Italian butcher's son. I wanted to show her. I'm sure I didn't mean to eat the things. I'm sure I meant to return with them and hang them back at the foot of the bed."
"Please go on," I managed to say. "This is such a very human page—I'm really excited to know what happened."
"Well, one of those flashy Bowery dudes came loafing along and said: 'Hi, Johnny, let's have a look at the grapes,' I let him take them, in my pride and innocence, and he wouldn't give them back. He only laughed and began to eat them before my eyes. I begged for them, and wept, and told him how my mother was sick and my father had gone 'way uptown to get the grapes for her because there were none such to be had in our neighborhood. And, please, he must give them back because they were White Muscats of Alexandria, very precious, and my father would kill me. But the young man only laughed until I began to make a real uproar. Then he said sharply to shut up, called me a young thief, and said if I said another word he'd turn me over to the police. Then he flung me a fifty-cent piece and went away, munching the grapes. And," the young man finished, "the fifty-cent piece was lead."
Then he looked up from his sketch and, seeing the expression of my face, gave a little cry of delight.
"Great Grief, man!" he cried, "stay as you are—only hold that expression for two minutes!"
But I have held it from that day to this.
WITHOUT A LAWYER
However bright the court's light may have appeared to the court, the place in which it was shining smelt damnably of oil. It was three o'clock in the afternoon, but already the Alaskan night had descended. The court sat in a barn, warmed from without by the heavily drifted snow and from within by the tiny flames of lanterns and the breathing of men, horses, and cows. Here and there in the outskirts of the circle of light could be seen the long face of a horse or the horned head of a cow. There was a steady sound of munching. The scene was not unlike many paintings of the stable in Bethlehem on the night of the Nativity. And here, too, justice was being born in a dark age. There had been too many sudden deaths, too many jumped claims, too much drinking, too much shooting, too many strong men, too few weak men, until finally—for time, during the long winter, hung upon the neck like a millstone—the gorges of the more decent had risen. Hence the judge, hence the jury, hence the prisoner, dragged from his outlying cabin on a charge of murder. As there were no lawyers in the community, the prisoner held his own brief. Though not a Frenchman, he had been sarcastically nicknamed, because of his small size and shrinking expression, Lou Garou.
The judge rapped for order upon the head of a flour-barrel behind which he sat. "Lou Garou," he said, "you are accused of having shot down Ruddy Boyd in cold blood, after having called him to the door of his cabin for that purpose on the twenty-ninth of last month. Guilty or not guilty?"
"Sure," said Lou Garou timidly, and nodding his head. "I shot him."