to assist him as big as Judge Davis himself, but who, unlike the judge, had a voice as sonorous as a fog-horn. Lincoln sat quietly at one of the tables in the bar, busily engaged in writing out a brief of some case entirely foreign to the one in hand. The case was called. Lincoln rose with calm dignity, and said : " Your honor, I appear for the defendant." Then he sat down and coolly resumed his writing. The jury was impanelled, but Mr Lin coln had no objection to make to any one of them. The prosecution accepted the jury, wondering what on earth Lincoln's game could be. The big assistant prosecutor made the opening address to the jury, and fulmi nated against the defendant in the approved style of prosecuting counsel. Lincoln went on with his writing. Witness after witness was called for the prosecution; but when they were turned over to Lincoln he had no ques tion to ask them. He said so. and quietly resumed his work on that interminable brief. Then as a coup-de-gr&ce the prosecuting witness was put upon the stand. He was a wily witness. His testimony was apparently a perfect chain. It was delivered coolly, calmly, and with an assumption of candor. The witness was sometimes reticent, and had to be drawn out by the little prosecutor when his evidence was damnatory of the defendant. At last his examination in chief was con cluded; and the prosecutor said, with an air of triumph, " Mr. Lincoln, take the witness." Mr. Lincoln stopped his writing at once, threw his feet upon the table, and looking steadfastly at the witness, who was bracing himself for the usual ordeal of cross-exam ination, said solemnly, — "Young man, is it customary in your vil lage to get upon the witness-stand and swear to a lie?"
The witness was staggered, and flushed in the face blood-red. The little prosecutor shrieked in shrill alto, accompanied by his colleague in sonorous bass: " Your honor, I object." Then the two raised a little Babel, in which the words " unseemly " and " out rageous " were mainly distinguishable. "Mr. Lincoln," said Judge Davis, " have you any special reason for using that language?" "I have, your honor," replied Lincoln. "Then," said the judge, "you may pro ceed with the question, and the witness must answer yes or no." Mr. Lincoln repeated the question in the same calm manner in which he had before propounded it. The witness choked and gasped; and when the judge calmly insisted again that he should answer it, he fainted. "Take him to the sheriff's room," said Judge Davis, adding sarcastically : " The weather is very sultry. The house is very close. The atmosphere is too much for the young man. Mr. Clerk, call the next case." Lincoln had resumed the writing of his brief; and when some of the witnesses came to him and asked him if they might go home, he answered that the case was over, and those who did not want to stay need not do so. He was right; the case was over. Shortly afterward Judge Davis, at the request of the prosecuting witness, was called into the sheriff's room, when the young man con fessed that he himself threw the duck in at the church window. He said that he and the defendant had both been paying attention to the same girl, and he had been discarded. In revenge for the triumph of his successful rival he had trumped up this charge, and by the aid of confederates had hoped to sustain it successfully in court.
