"It is the match I found on Floyd."
And it was felt that he had held his own.
"Phineas Fowler," called the district attorney. The old chemist tottered to the stand and held a parchment hand high in air while the clerk administered his oath.
"What is your business, Mr. Fowler?"
The pantaloon trembled visibly and twisted the two horns of his forked board one after the other with nervous fingers, blinking about all the while like an old Rosicrucian projected into the daylight world.
"A chemist," he piped, in a treble so high that the thoughtless smiled, but so feeble the chief justice bent forward to hear and the stenographer requested him to raise his voice. Ecks began sketching away rapidly at the advent of this character. The very odor of acids seemed to exhale from his shivering person.
"What lines of trade do you supply?"
"Photographers, dyers, armorers——"
"The last class with explosives and fulminating compounds, I presume?"
"Also with oils and varnishes," answered the pantaloon, his voice breaking in the desperate effort he made to be audible.