"Hardly an accident," was replied.
"He didn't throw at the girl."
"No matter. He threw a heavy tumbler at her father's head. The intention was to do an injury; and the law will not stop to make any nice discriminations in regard to the individual upon whom the injury was wrought. Moreover, who is prepared to say that he didn't aim at the girl?"
"Any man who intimates such a thing is a cursed liar!" exclaimed the landlord, half maddened by the suggestion.
"I won't throw a tumbler at your head," coolly remarked the individual whose plain speaking had so irritated Simon Slade, "Throwing tumblers I never thought a very creditable kind of argument—though with some men, when cornered, it is a favorite mode of settling a question. Now, as for our friend the landlord, I am sorry to say that his new business doesn't seem to have improved his manners or his temper a great deal. As a miller, he was one of the best-tempered men in the world, and wouldn't have harmed a kitten. But, now, he can swear, and bluster, and throw glasses at people's heads, and all that sort of thing, with the best of brawling rowdies. I'm afraid he's taking lessons in a bad school—I am."
"I don't think you have any right to insult a man in his own house," answered Slade, in a voice dropped to a lower key than the one in which he had before spoken.
"I had no intention to insult you," said the other. "I was only speaking supposititiously, and in view of your position on a trial for manslaughter, when I suggested that no one could prove, or say that you didn't mean to strike little Mary, when you threw the tumbler."
"Well, I didn't mean to strike her: and I don't believe there is a man in this bar-room who thinks that I did—not one."
"I'm sure I do not," said the individual with whom he was in controversy. "Nor I"—"Nor I" went round the room.
"But, as I wished to set forth," was continued, "the case will not be so plain a one when it finds its way into court, and twelve men, to each of whom you may be a stranger, come to sit in judgment upon the act. The slightest twist in the evidence, the prepossessions of a witness, or the bad tact of the prosecution, may cause things to look so dark on your side as to leave you but little chance. For my part, if the child should die, I think your chances for a term in the state's prison are as eight to ten; and I should call that pretty close cutting."