Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 01.pdf/487

442 LEGAL INCIDENTS.

I.

HE central facts of this incident are true; it actually happened.

In the year 1867 a young lawyer sat waiting alone in his office till nearly six, and as he waited he mused on the terrible uncertainty of his income and the reality of his expenses; for he was married, with a sickly wife and a child to support in a large city, with a meagre acquaintance and less practice. His grocer had been put off on the Saturday before; his rent was long over-due; the hired girl was about leaving for lack of wages, and times looked so hard that he actually half decided to abandon law practice for anything to earn a living for his family.

The dim light in the office lamp was just being turned out when the door opened, and in came a little odd-looking man in a dilapidated and seedy condition, appearing more like a tramp than a client, and said,—

"Are you a lawyer?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Well, I am in trouble."

"What about?" said the lawyer.

"They drove me out of town, and rode me on a rail, covered me all over with tar and feathers, and broke up my store at the 'Soo,' and I come down to see what I could do about it; they're all well off, and I was not guilty."

The story sounded fishy; the location was five hundred miles away; the man was a Canadian. The lawyer doubted if any good would come of it, but said,—

"Why didn't you get a lawyer up there? Such a case is worth five hundred dollars."

"Lawyers up there all take sides against me," said the client; and down into his inside pocket he went, drew out and counted out five hundred dollars, which the lawyer took in amazement.

Then the little man looked like a prince. He was taller; he was important. Money made him stronger, braver.

"We'll Capias every mother's son of them," said the lawyer, defiantly.

He took the money home, threw it in his wife's lap, kissed her, kissed his child, paced the floor in joy and delight. It was a godsend; it was a fortune to a poor lawyer.

Monday morning he swore out a Capias, with twenty thousand dollars' bail, in the United States Court, gave it to the marshal, and waited. The time was long,—so long that he was about to complain to the Court of the marshal's lack of diligence,—when, on another Saturday night three weeks later, in walked the marshal with the rich defendants. They had come a long way to settle, to compromise, to ask the little man's forgiveness.

Now the lawyer grew haughty, then indignant; then proposed ten thousand dollars; then accepted six thousand and costs, with two hundred dollars extra to the marshal; then called his client, and received a snug two thousand dollars' fee; then furnished his home, and started business in earnest, with the spirit of the Indian, who believes that the spirits of all enemies captured in battle enter into the soul of the victor to make him a bigger Indian!