“What!—That refined, lady-like, accomplished young woman!”
“She has an accomplishment or two you’ve never dreamed of, ’Squire. I’d pit her ag’in the sharpest practitioner in Duke’s, and she’d come out ahead. I thought I knew something of preparing a cause; but she has given hints that will be worth more to me than all her fees!”
“You do not mean that she shows experience in such practices?”
“Perhaps not. It seems more like mother-wit, I acknowledge; but it’s mother-wit of the brightest sort. She understands them reporters by instinct, as it might be. What is more, she backs all her suggestions with gold, or current bank-notes.”
“And where can she get so much money?”
“That is more than I can tell you,” returned Timms, opening some papers belonging to the case, and laying them a little formally before the senior counsel, to invite his particular attention. “I’ve never thought it advisable to ask the question.”
“Timms, you do not, cannot think Mary Monson guilty?”
“I never go beyond the necessary facts of a case; and my opinion is of no consequence whatever. We are employed to defend her; and the counsel for the State are not about to get a verdict without some working for it. That’s my conscience in these matters, ’Squire Dunscomb.”
Dunscomb asked no more questions. He turned gloomily to the papers, shoved his glass aside, as if it gave him pleasure no longer, and began to read. For near four hours he and Timms were earnestly engaged in preparing a brief, and in otherwise getting the cause ready for trial.