Page:Hugh Pendexter--Tiberius Smith.djvu/173

 mit he was not a lawyer in the technical sense of the word, but when it came to doing the Daniel-arrived-at-judgment act, he had Blackstone and all the other calf-bound antiques begging for mercy. And despite we were there on a mere vacation, and although he was forced into the office, and while his first and last case was a stinger—a quadrupedal one—he didn't go to work and slur it over and pass it on to the higher courts. No, sirree! Perhaps that's where he slipped up; for although I was betting five to nothing on him, I can see now he tickled the key-stone of the commonwealth out of plumb by trying to get a corner on jurisdiction. To be rigidly exact, I believe there were enough questions of law tangled up in that one case to last the appellate tribunals until frozen apples are retailed in the warmer regions. Yet Tiberius discarded his coat, and with his usual broad charity hogged the whole bunch.

"But to romp back and catch the flag. With the fat check we were well-ladened with pin-money, and when we arrived at Spluckersville, Tib swore it reminded him of his birthplace, and his twinkling brown eyes would gather pearls as he found the old swimming-hole he would have laved in had he been allowed to have been born and grow up in that drowsy environment. Then came a few stanzas about his lost youth, and 'Oft in the Stilly Night,'