The lawyer in the case ahead of us was a new-comer, and strung it out day after day to advertise himself, and yelled so you could hear him over in the band-stand, to show his ability. Hen, all the time, was getting more and more morbid, and forgot his temperance vows, and tried to talk about the case to everybody. About half the time it would be a juryman he would try to confide in, and this made trouble on account of their thinking he was trying to influence them. One night Hen was owly as sin, drinking with Walker Swayne from Pleasant Valley Township; and when he cried into his beer because Fillmore Smythe was trying to swindle him and blast his good name, Walker slapped him for approaching him on a case he might be called to sit on. I put Hen to bed at the Revere House, and told Mrs. Peters he'd been called home. She 'phoned out to have him count the young turkeys, and the Swede second man had no more sense than to say he had not been there, instead of placing him where they had no telephone, as an honest hired man with any sprawl would have done. You couldn't trust this Swede as far as you could throw a thesaurus by the tail. I am not saying that he was corrupt; but he was just thumb-hand-sided and lummoxy, and blurted, "Hae ain't bane hare" into the transmitter with never a thought of the danger of telling the truth. Mrs. Peters didn't know what to be distressed about, and just because I'm paid the princely salary I get for saying nothing about such things, she jumped on me like a duck on a June-bug.
When Hen and I went to McKenzie's office the night before our case came up, the lawyer was worried. He asked us if we knew who was going to testify against us.
"No," snapped Hen; "an' I don't care. Nobody ever saw me sign that note, and it don't make any matter."
Then he went on to tell what great friends he and Judge Brockway used to be, when the judge used to shoot prairie-chickens in Hen's stubble, and Mrs. Peters cooked the chickens for the judge.
"Brockway thinks as much of me as a brother," said Hen. "He told me as much when he was running for judge. He won't see me stuck."
This didn't seem to impress Judge McKenzie much. He still looked worried, and said the other side had got every banker in town on their side as handwriting experts.
"I don't like the looks of things," said he.
Hen flew mad at the idea of his lawyer's hinting that any man could get stuck in such a case. The judge tried to explain, and Hen asked him how much the other side was paying him, and the judge threw up his job. Pretty soon, though, Hen got him to take a new retainer of fifteen dollars, and he opened a new account in his books. This made Hen feel good, for the judge was great with juries when he was sober. He was good and sober now, for he had just taken the drinking cure for the third time. We had lots of faith in Providence and McKenzie, but were scary as three-year-olds that night at any strange noise in the brush. You know how it is when you feel that way.
Things went wrong the next morning. So many of the jurors said that Hen had talked to them that Judge Brockway just glared at Hen, and said that the court was not favorably impressed by tactics of that sort.
Walker Swayne told how he had slapped Hen's chops to drive off his improper advances, and Judge Brockway said that he could not condone breaches of the peace; but a juror, like a woman, was justified if any one; and when old Hen asked Mac for the Lord's sake, were there any women sitting on this case, Brockway wilted Hen again with a look.