“Your Honor,” he said as he rose, “the defense rests.”
The jury were out only six minutes. Mr. Lukins insisted that it was only five minutes and a half, and added that he'd be dad-rotted if it was a second longer than that.
As the lately accused Tandy came out of the courthouse with his imported lawyer—Aunt Tilly bringing up the rear with his trembling, weeping, happy little wife—friendly hands were outstretched to clasp his and a whiskered old gentleman with a thumbnail like a Brazil nut grabbed at his arm.
“Whichaway did Billy Priest go?” he demanded—“little old Fightin' Billy—whar did he go to? Soon as he started in talkin' I placed him. Whar is he?”
Walking side by side, Tandy and Durham came down the steps into the soft June night, and Tandy took a long, deep breath into his lungs.
“Mr. Durham,” he said, “I owe a great deal to you.”
“How's that?” said Durham.
Just ahead of them, centered in a shaft of light from the window of the barroom of the Drummers' Home Hotel, stood Judge Priest. The old judge had been drinking. The pink of his face was a trifle more pronounced, the high whine in his voice a trifle weedier, as he counted one by one certain pieces of silver into the wide-open palm of a saddle-colored negro.
“How's that?” said Durham. “I say I owe everything in the world to you,” repeated Tandy.
“No,” said Durham, “what you owe me is the fee you agreed to pay me for defending you. There's the man you're looking for.”