Got Their Names Mixed. the advantage promised by this course, and asked permission to poll the jury and get their full names. He had a diagram of the jury box on a card, and as the names were given he wrote down Tom, Jack, Bill, Luke or whatever the first name was, on his card, taking care to see that each was assigned to the proper place on it. The case continued all afternoon, and there was an adjournment for supper. At the night session the road's attorney made the closing argument for the defendant, in which lie very cleverly followed the home attor ney's method of appealing to individual jury men, he having evidently studied his jury diagram to good advantage. The case was at last submitted to the jury. Everybody thought the defendant would get the verdict in short order, as it had pretty well established the plaintiff had driven his venerable mule on the right-of-way through a fence-gap of his own construction. But there was a hitch somewhere. At midnight the court sent out for the jury. They came in red-eyed and vengeful looking. They were asked as to the probability of a verdict. Ten men shook their heads de jectedly, but the foreman, a stalwart lumber man from Red Brush, said: "We ain't right together on the evidence, yet, your honor, but if you'll give us a little more time, I think I can get 'em to look at this thing right." From this it took no seer to infer there were about eleven hard-headed men on that jury. The court studied the matter for a few moments and then ordered the sheriff to take them back. It was three in the morning when the jury voluntarily reported. The foreman's face wore a triumphant expres sion as he answered, "Yes," to the usual
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question as to whether a verdict had been reached. The decision was for the plaintiff and double damages were awarded him! On a poll of the jury the foreman and one other answered with decision that that was his ver dict. The others were a bit weak in their responses. The verdict was filed and the jury was discharged. The road's attorney stayed over to investi gate. He got a juryman to one side and a flood of light was thrown upon the singular action of the peersmen. "It was just this way," said the juryman, as a weary expression crossed his face; "the minute we took a vote on it there was ten of us for you, and two for the fellow who owned the old mule. At first the case looked to us plain enough for a Chinaman, but the trouble was, in talking to the jury you got Jim Dowell, that's the foreman—you got him and Lige Simpson mixed. Jim and Lige ain't good friends, having had a fallin' out over a calf last fall, and every time you said so and so, Jim, and called him Lige, why Lige cussed, and when you palavered to Lige and called him Jim, then Jim cussed. You see, after supper they changed seats, and I guess that made it come wrong on the card you had. It warn't your fault, and we was all for you, but Lige and Jim was agin you from the start. We didn't want to stay cooped up there all night, and so we got to thinking it over, and concluded they might be right after all, and so we let 'em 'convince' us thatvay. Some of the boys said Jim had a knife and Lige an old gun in his boots, but we didn't keer for that. We just let 'em arger us into it by 'reasonin'." The railroad company, however, managed to get the best of the "reasonin' " in the Ap pellate Court, and the case was reversed.
