any one else upon the lips of the defendant. At first smiling at the mock-fury into which Searle was lashing himself, they had become white and bloodless under the sting of these heaped-up insults. But this last was more than the man could stand in silence.
"Is my position so defenseless, I ask your Honor," Hampstead interrupted, "that I am compelled to endure this?"
The judge bestowed a chiding glance upon the attorney, but replied to the minister:
"A certain liberty is allowed the prosecutor."
"But that liberty should not be a license to defame!" protested the defendant.
"Am I to be permitted to proceed with my argument or not?" bawled Searle in his most bullying manner, while he glared at the audacious minister.
"You may proceed," replied the Court, affecting not to notice the disrespect with which it had been addressed.
Searle continued, lapsing now into an argumentative strain.
"The defendant himself has said that the case against him is without a flaw. He has had the effrontery to urge that your Honor accept the testimony against him as true testimony. He has only argued that if we are to believe the witnesses for the prosecution, we are also to believe him. I say—I affirm with all the force at my command—that we are not to believe him at all!
"I ask your Honor to consider first the motive for his testimony. The man is hopelessly involved. The charge of burglary is a simple one, compared with the broader indictment of moral profligacy which the whole community is at this moment prepared to find against him. Ruin stares him in the face. His pose is shattered. His disguise is penetrated. If he goes from this court room to the identification bureau of which he has spoken in
