“God forbid, my good Mrs. Horton—we have elective judges; that will do for the present. Too much of a good thing is as injurious as the positively bad. I prefer the present mode of drawing lots.”
“Have you got a Quaker in the box?—If you have, you are safe enough.”
“I doubt if the District Attorney would suffer that; although he appears to be kind and considerate. The man who goes into that box must be prepared to hang if necessary.”
“For my part, I wish all hanging was done away with. I can see no good that hanging can do a man.”
“You mistake the object, my dear Mrs. Horton, though your argument is quite as good as many that are openly advanced on the same side of the question.”
“Just hear me, ’Squire,” rejoined the woman; for she loved dearly to get into a discussion on any question that she was accustomed to hear debated among her guests. “The country hangs a body to reform a body; and what good can that do when a body is dead?”
“Very ingeniously put,” returned the counsellor, politely offering his box to the landlady, who took a few grains; and then deliberately helping himself to a pinch of snuff—“quite as ingeniously as much of the argument that appears in public. The objection lies to the premises, and not to the deduction, which is absolutely logical and just. A hanged body is certainly an unreformed body; and, as you say, it is quite useless to hang in order to reform.”
“There!” exclaimed the woman in triumph—“I told ’Squire Timms that a gentleman who knows as much as you do must be on our side. Depend on one thing, lawyer Dunscomb, and you too, gentlemen—depend on it, that Mary Monson will never be hanged.”
This was said with a meaning so peculiar, that it struck Dunscomb, who watched the woman’s earnest countenance while she was speaking, with undeviating interest and intensity.
“It is my duty and my wish, Mrs. Horton, to believe as much, and to make others believe it also, if I can,” he answered, now anxious to prolong a discourse that a moment before he had found tiresome.