Next morning the judge awoke feeling unusually well. There are epochs hi the experience of a drunkard when the opaque mists befogging the mind vanish, and the return of hitelligence opens transparent as an arctic sky in midwinter, and this, too, immediately following a series of debauches. So shone the transplendent discrimination of the Santa Cruz judge as he smilingly took his seat upon the bench next morning sober. The courtroom was neatly aj^pointed. Before the judgment desk sat the busy clerk writing; every officer was in his place, attentive, while the uncovered spectators, awe-inspired of ignorance, stood with under-jaw dropped on their breast, or speaking one with another in low whispers. Glancing over the calendar, the judge called the case of The People versus Pedro Castro.
"Your honor," respectfully replied the sheriff, "the man has been hanged."
"Hanged!" exclaimed the judge, as forebodings of something fearfully wrong crept over him, "I do not understand you, sir; there has been no trial yet."
"No, your honor," said the clerk, "but yesterday, you will remember, your honor waived trial, sentenced the defendant, and peremptorily ordered the sheriff to carry the sentence into immediate execution."
" Hanged, did you say ? " meditatively remarked the judge as the situation gradually dawned upon him, " well, never mind, let the trial proceed nunc pro time. All orders and judgments of this court must be justified by due legal proceedings, and if the sheriff has so far erred in his understanding of the court as to lead to the commission of an unhappy blunder, the court will harbor no anger on that account, but will endeavor, so far as strict probity will admit, to reconcile the acts of the officers with the rulings of the court."
The sheriff thus mildly admonished then brought before the judge, whose learned complacency once more fully possessed him. the prisoner, who after a sober but speedy trial was duly condemned and executed.
