"The man is a criminal who forfeited bail," explained the young lawyer to the policemen. "I was his bondsman, and offered to arrest him, when he resisted. Don't let him escape."

"He will not be apt to escape, Mr. Brown," said the officer bending over the man. "He has got his demit this time."

"I hope not," said Brown, but it was so. The man died in the agent's office in less than half an hour. If anything had been needed to complete the agent's terror, it was this. But the shock had partly sobered Brown, and it drove Katy's affairs out of his mind. The effect of it was that the circumstances of the trial monopolized Mr. Lorn, and a reluctance to speak to Katy of so painful a subject kept him from visiting her. Then his partner, without confessing the occasion of his learning it, told of her engagement to Earl Groth, and Lorn felt bitterly that, for his own good, he must not see her. It was one of those wise resolves that would keep until he did see her. This he soon had occasion to do, but not before some other events occurred relating to the cause itself.

While Mr. Lorn was occupied in the case of Commonwealth v. Brown, Judge Groth made a motion in the suit to recover Katy's money. Perhaps because of absence of opposing counsel; I have known such things to be done. He said to the court: "In Keith v. Overdo; tender of bond and security; and motion to withdraw attached funds."

You perceive, my legal reader, this was to get out the money seized by our nonchalant friend the deputy sheriff, leaving in its place a promise of the broker and one of his friends to repay it in court if called upon · - a usual motion in such cases.

"Notice to withdraw, I presume you mean," said the suave judiciary, with emphasis on the first word; thereby intimating that this was not to be done summarily or in the absence of counsel VOL. XXXIV. —NO. 202.

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course.

"May it please the court," remonstrated Judge Groth, "is not that unusual? the plaintiff being secured by the bond, it cannot interest her to retain the money here, idle, and must we wait on her pleasure?"

"It is in the discretion of the court, and you must wait on that," said the judge, as formally civil as ever. "Shall the notice be entered?" It was entered, and argued soon after. Judge Groth presented his argument as above, and added that the retention of the fund in idleness could only be from malice, since the plaintiff could not use it.

Mr. Lorn referred to the uncertain condition of all business securities, and the evidence in the attachment. "If the defendant suffered through this extra caution, he could blame nothing but his own act and character."

The court said: "The case is docketed for the first of the next term; the funds will be retained till then. If at that time it is continued at the plaintiff's instigation, this motion may be renewed; but not otherwise.

This was a swift judge in getting through a docket, and he was provoked at the delays in this suit. He had found a way to squelch any more dilatory motions now. Judge Groth was very angry. This shyster recently called to the bar had beaten him in open court again, and the bar congratulated the young fellow on it. After the intimation of his honor, he would not renew the motion, to be beaten another time; but he resolved to talk to the judge, his old friend and former partner, about it- a not unusual way of attorneys in some instances. He did talk with him, and drew the inference that his case was lost. The judge as much as said the fund in court was rightfully Katy Keith's, and if the law could give it to her, she should have it. When the judge talks that way, it requires no great shrewdness to anticipate what the law is going to be. It mortified Groth, and he spoke of it at home.

"And then Catharine Keith will be

rich after all!" said his wife, thinking of her mistake in trying to break her son's engagement.

"So far as this court can make it," said her husband irritably, "but the Federal court will decide very differently."

"Oh, judge!" said she, "it might not, you know, and you need n't advise it. Think of Earl; he likes her yet."

All

"They all like her," said he, as if he resented it. "I have had nothing but sour looks and words from my other boy Ben, about it. I believe he was at the bottom of that wretched blunder over the attachment;" and the judge looks like the elder Booth, as Richard III., when they tell him Stanley has deserted to the enemy. But a wife's influence is as wearing as water dropping, and the hard judge will find it so; Katy Keith will rise into family favor again. this while Katy was going through her troubles; and now Mr. Lorn received a curious polyglot letter from Madame Konigratz. She wrote in great distress; she had inquired of her husband, and sent a vague description of the mysterious stranger in blue dress-coat, but her information was obscured by her own troubles. Konigratz had disappeared. She wanted Mr. Lorn to make inquiries, and she was going to send poor little Taddy in search of his father.

This information made an interview with his client necessary. Konigratz would hardly turn up as a witness in time. Should the proceedings go on to trial without him? or asking a postponement, should Lorn risk the hold on the attached funds? If Katy was willing, he would try the case. Konigratz's evidence would not touch the principle involved, but he must consult his client about so decided a step. At her mother's he learned that she was working at a book-bindery, and he went there in search of her. He arrived at the fourth floor where the bindery was, to receive Katy in his arms, flying from the tipsy foreman.

The man was civil and respectful when sober, but if drinking, the reverse. It was not the first time he had offended,

but he had never offended so grossly before. Lorn knocked him down, and now led Katy out trembling and crying, almost carrying her down the steep staircases.

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"My dear Miss Keith," said he, "why do you stay at such a place?" "There!" she said, recovering herself and removing his arm. What can I do? I must earn something for mamma and me; and what can a poor girl do? I have no place else." Poor little thing! after all her gentle breeding, to come to this; to have no way to earn her bread, but by submitting to the coarse insults of a brute. It was a terrible revelation of her hardships to the young man, and he wanted to be very tender with her, but could not. She was ashamed at the humiliation he had witnessed, and remembered only that she had seen him coming out of the drinking saloon. He had broken his promise, and could be nothing to her. If she had spoken of it, he might have explained or expiated his wrong; but she knew that that would not do. It would betray an interest in him she ought not to have. He found her changed and reserved, and could only talk business; but when he left her he asked if he might not call in the evening. She pleaded fatigue and excused herself.

"You will not go to that place again?" he asked.

Mamma will see Mr. the proprietor. I will not return unless I can do it without risk."

Then, very reluctantly, he left her. But the night was fine and clear, with a brilliant moon, and Lorn was now in love. Yes, the pity and sympathy, and the very repulse of that evening, made him confess it and be proud of it, and lover-like he strolled by the house. Katy was sitting on the front stoop with the Rev. Mr. Jargony, and the preacher was a bachelor. Dear reader, did you ever take a sharp jealous pang to bed with you and try to sleep on it?

But better times were coming for Katy. Earl Groth had returned. His mother had only waited for that to open

tion of the marriage contract.

The Groths descended upon Katy like an avalanche. She had a situation, at the time, in a dollar store, a new enterprise in those days, and the Groth girls came fluttering about the shy little shopgirl, to the shopman's delight. They took such an interest in her, too. "Why not have some one, some real good lawyer, to help that dear, clever Mr. Lorn? It was usual, and papa said it would be quite right, and make her case safer." If Katy had had any disposition to reject these advances, she could not have done it, for her mother's sake. The poor widow was starving for old association and friends; easy, careless gossip about things and people she knew. In fine, her influence and that of the others induced Katy to consent to the employment of additional counsel, if Mr. Lorn advised it. That was her condition. She would do nothing in the case without his advice. Earl Groth undertook to see the young lawyers, and was very busy and important about it. Let us see how he sped on his mission.

a

He found the partners drawn up before the cold grate, which served as a spittoon. Brown was making a fox and goose board; Lorn was reading the Electra of Euripides in the Greek language he resorted to in trouble, as other men take to drink. Perhaps he tried a little of both, as not altogether incompatible. Earl was elegant; perfumed like a milliner, if milliners are necessarily in odors. He tendered his card, which Brown gravely received and passed over to his partner.

"I am a friend of Miss Keith," said this gorgeous visitor.

"Did n't know she had any friends," said Lorn dryly; "sit down."

"I have called about her business," said Earl; "consulting with her friends, she is advised to procure assistant counsel. You don't object?"

"Not in the least," said Lorn.

"It is Feebil & Costs," continued Earl. Will they do?"

"None better," said Lorn; "say to them we will be happy to give the pa

"Has our best wishes for her success," added Lorn. "We need say no more about the matter. There is nothing else, I believe?"

There was nothing else. Earl Groth had done quite enough for one morning. It is characteristic of the man, that he never told Katy of the withdrawal of Brown & Lorn from the case. She found that out later; to her own and Earl Groth's cost.

"Who the deuce is that?" asked Brown, after the visitor left.

"That," said his partner, "is Earl Groth, the son of Judge Groth, and engaged to our late client."

"The dickens you say!" retorted Brown, tapping the bars of the grate with the tongs, and twitching his hat forward, by a curious movement of the occipito - frontalis muscle. "Do you know I thought you were ahead there?” "Perhaps two of us made that mistake," said Lorn grimly, "but I got the worst of it."

"You did n't know I was soft there myself, did you?" said his partner, looking curiously at his companion. "I never expected to be so well, it don't matter. I used to be absolutely clammy about her. I was that soaked and limp in love, it oozed out of the pores like sweat. There was no more stand up in me than in a hot collar in July. I just wilted down to her, I did. I hated you, old pard, and your deuced lingo, to kill. That was the way it took me. I felt like she was mine by rights, and you ought to know it. Dad took to her, so did the old woman; and sis and all. The old folks said if I got her they would set us up in a too-ral-loo-ral (truly rural?) cot,

and divide the pot like the governor in the Probable Son. was glad, dem my stingy hide! that you had no dad to pony up. I beg pardon, old fellow: I don't believe I could do it, if you had won, and p'rhaps you would n't care a cuss then if I did n't- but I was a mean dog, that's a fact. But how could I help it! such a gentle, loving, timid little thing like that!" and Brown looked very like relapsing into that clammy state again.

"God bless you, my Pylades," said Lorn, which the other did not at all understand. "It's as you say, and timid too in a way. But Brown, she has more real pluck Let me tell you. It scares me to think of it now.

"You know last Saturday I took her out driving. We started over the new river bridge. I was driving a wild, hard-mouthed brute, and had no business there, but I wanted to -never mind, I did n't get it. The parapet or guard rail at the side is not all up, and it is against orders to cross. But they knew me, confound 'em, and let me by. There are open spaces where the railing is not up, and the cursed river boiled and seethed and howled on the falls, a hundred and fifty feet below, like a hungry devil. A beam or plank two inches thick and two feet wide had been set on edge along an open panel, as a sort of guard; but something had tipped it over, and one end was keyed out, a yard or more, on the bridge, while the other end projected diagonally a few inches over the hell of waters; just the end of it, like that," illustrating by laying his cane on the table in the described position. "I was bearing well over to the other side, you may believe, when a loose plank or something started the brute, and he shied desperately over to that side. The wheels struck along the outer edge of that beam, just as the flange of a carwheel fits over a T rail. The beam was eighteen or twenty feet long, the brute at full plunging speed and fighting the bit like a born devil. We were scourng down that railway at lightning speed to assured destruction.

"Death was just certain. But, an inch or so from the end, the tires knocking the chips into the water, the wheels caught, bounced, and with a skip and a jump we were saved. It was done, and done in less than a second. I was cold all over; faint and sick; nauseated. I turned to look at Miss Keith. She had not blenched a whit; her eye was just as bright, and there was that little eddy or dimple you may have noticed at the corner of her mouth before her quiet smile. She said in a calm, usual voice, 'I am glad we escaped; I did not think you could do it.' Brown, she had not shrieked or spoken, nor even offered to touch my bridle hand, which not one mortal in a million could avoid, though it might be ruin; and yet she could have dropped her glove over the buggy sheer down into that boiling death." "My God! what an escape!" exclaimed Brown. “What did she say?'

"Nothing you would care to hear; took it as easy as if she had a pair of wings under her shawl," said Lorn. "As I helped her out at home, she said, 'Please don't tell mamma; it might frighten her.' Frighten her! I should think it would. I cannot shut my eyes without seeing the bridge, with chips and blocks lying about; the scared face of an Irishman running to us; the sweet summer sky above, and that fierce storm of white, rock-gashed water below, sending its hungry bellow to my ears. Be still and listen, and you can hear it now, above the noises of the town, and at night plainer. Timid? Yes, she is, in a way; but braver too, my boy, than anything that wears breeches, and that I'll swear."

"And she is going to marry that box of perfumery," said Brown, returning to the subject.

"Of course; she is one of them that stays," said Lorn. "She will not break her word, if he does not, and, to do him justice, he stuck by her while the others fell off. As soon as he got home, he raised a row about things, and had her and her mother in comfortable quarters a cottage of his father's. Aunt Cynthy told me all about it."