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 len, his features working in rage, and his voice deepening to a bull-like roar, while with an upper-cut gesture of his clenched fist and right arm, he appeared to lift the words to some mighty height and hurl them like a thunder bolt of doom.

The minister, sitting with every muscle taut, as he strained under the viciousness of this assault, felt just before its climax some insensible cause directing his gaze from the face of his official accuser to that of his real Nemesis, the actress, and was surprised to see her crouching like a tigress for a spring, with eyes fixed upon the prosecutor, and a look of unutterable malice, hate, and loathing in their savage beams.

But with this scene thrown for a moment on the screen of his mind, the suddenly sobering utterance of Searle indicated that he was concluding his argument, and the defendant's eyes returned quickly to the attorney's face.

"For these reasons, your Honor," the man was saying, "so patent and bristling from the testimony that I need not even have spoken of them in order to bring them to your attention, I ask you to find that the offense as charged in the complaint has been committed, and that there is sufficient cause to believe the defendant guilty thereof, and to order that he be held to answer before the Honorable, the Superior Court of the County of Alameda and the State of California."

Searle sat down and wiped his brow,—confident that he had added greatly to his reputation by a masterly argument which had sealed the fate of a man, against whom, despite the minister's suspicions, he really had nothing in the world but that instinct for the chase to which, once a strong nature gives up, it may find itself led on to excesses that are the extreme of injustice.

The audience moved restlessly yet silently, shifting cramped muscles tenderly and rubbing strained eyes; but