As he wrote it down, he murmured: "We've often had Richard Roe arraigned in this court, but never Monkey, I believe."
"Now, Monkey, I'm going to ask a question, which you need not answer unless you choose to. Did you, on Saturday night last, between the hours of sunset and sunrise, raise, fly, and elevate one six-cornered paper kite, bearing a motto or sentiment from the sacred book called Leviticus, and tie, fix, anchor, attach, or fasten the same to the lightning-rod that surmounts the spire, or steeple, of the First Church of the sect or denomination known and designated as Baptist, fronting and abutting on Independence square in this city?"
"To the best of my knowledge and belief, I did," said Monkey.
"Please state to the court, Monkey, your motives, if you had any, for this wicked and atrocious act."
In answer to this, Monkey told briefly and clearly the whole story, which the reader already knows, beginning at the point where he "just stopped half a second, Sunday morning, to see how that boy's kite pulled." When he came to the scene in the Sunday-school room, he gave it with a dramatic effect that was well calculated to arouse sympathy for himself.
'Squire Moore had been as much interested as anybody in the kite on the steeple, and had laughed his enormous sides sore when he scanned it and its appendages through Patsy's glass. When Monkey had finished his story, the 'Squire delivered the decision of the court in a little speech.
"I have searched the Revised Statutes," said he, "and have consulted the best authorities; but I look in vain to find any statute which makes it a penal office to attach a kite to a steeple. The common law is silent on the subject, and none of the authorities mention any precedent. You have succeeded, young man, in committing a misdemeanor for which there is no penalty, and the court is, therefore, obliged to discharge you, with the admonition never to do so any more."
As Monkey left the bar, there was a rush for the door, the boys getting out first. They collected in a body in front of the building, and, when he appeared, gave him three tremendous cheers, with three others for 'Squire Moore,—in which performance the pastor's son was conspicuous.
But when Monkey came to face the domestic tribunal over which his father presided, he found that a lack of precedent was no bar to the administration of justice in that court.
About a week later, a package addressed to me, and bearing the business-card of a well-known tailor, was left at our door. When I opened it, I found a new Sunday suit, to replace the one which had been ruined when Phaeton wore it to the fire. It must have taken about all of his reward money to pay for it.