Page:The unhallowed harvest (1917).djvu/17

12 counsel to witness and from witness to jury. Beauty in distress! Stalwart manhood in ruins! How are brains and logic going to win out against such a combination, before a jury made up of clerks and workingmen?"

"So far as my observation has gone," replied the rector, "I'm inclined to think the ordinary jury deals out pretty even-handed justice."

"Not when there's a handsome woman in the case. Look at her now! By Jupiter! she's a beauty!"

Barry's enthusiasm was not unfounded. The plaintiff's wife was in animated conversation with her lawyer during the brief interval preceding his address. Evidently she was pointing out to him some mistake in Westgate's declarations, or fallacy in his logic. The jurors, the lawyers, the spectators in the court-room, were watching her, no less than were Barry Malleson and the Reverend Mr. Farrar. She was worth watching.

"Crude and uncultured, of course," added Barry. "But, take such a face and figure as that, plus clothes and social training—she is already reputed to have brains,—and you would have a social queen. Gad!"

He turned his eyes away, as if to rest them for a moment on some less fascinating object. The clergyman did not seem to consider that his companion's remarks called for any reply from him. People who knew Barry as well as Mr. Farrar did seldom took him very seriously.

The attorney for the plaintiff rose to make the concluding address to the jury. He had not the logical grasp of the case that his opponent had displayed, but he was more plausibly eloquent. He appealed more to the sympathies of the jurors than to their reason. He grew fierce in his denunciation of the greed and heartlessness of corporations in general, and of this corporation in particular. He became dramatic in his vivid description of the accident, and tearfully pathetic in depicting the future that lay before this man with the