Page:Frank Stockton - Rudder Grange.djvu/207

Rh the gallery, and Jone, he was set among the other men in the jury-box.

"The case was about a man named Brown, who married the half-sister of a man named Adams, who afterward married Brown's mother, and sold Brown a house he had got from Brown's grandfather, in trade, for half a grist-mill, which the other half of was owned by Adams's half-sister's first husband, who left all his property to a soup society, in trust, till his son should become of age, which he never did, but left a will which give his half of the mill to Brown; and the suit was between Brown and Adams and Brown again, and Adams's half-sister, who was divorced from Brown, and a man named Ramsey, who had put up a new over-shot wheel to the grist-mill." "Oh, my!" exclaimed Euphemia. "How could you remember all that?"

"I heard it so often, I couldn't help remembering it," replied Pomona. And she went on with her narrative.

"That case wasn't a easy one to understand, as you may see for yourselves, and it didn't get finished that day. They argyed over it a full week. When there wasn't no more witnesses to carve up, one lawyer made a speech, an' he set that crooked case so straight that you could see through it from the overshot wheel clean back to Brown's grandfather. Then another feller made a speech, an' he set the whole thing up another way. It was jus' as clear to look through, but it was another case altogether, no more like the other one than a apple-pie is like a mug o' cider. An' then they both took it up, an' they swung it around between them, till it was all twisted an' knotted an' wound up, an' tangled, worse than