Your Loving, Adoring L——.”
The effect was thrilling. The lawyer dropped the letter upon the table before him, ran his white fingers through his hair, and looked around with the air of a tired traveler when he ascertains he has walked five miles upon the wrong road. The gentlemen of the jury, with looks more of anger than of sorrow, dropped into their seats as suddenly as though an invisible hand had caught them from behind and jerked them to their benches.
The Judge, with an ill-concealed look of disgust, settled back into his chair, and the deep crease in his vest, immediately over where his dinner should have been hours before, grew more painfully perceptible.
I elbowed my way from the suffocating room before further correspondence was selected from the package for perusal.
THE MASON’S RIDE.
The goat, the goat, the bearded goat!
The horned, the hoofed, the hairy goat!
As I’m a sinner of some note,
Last night I rode the Mason’s goat!
He was a beast of wondrous size,