ignorant of what made it go, and of what it was accomplishing.

The three stolid figures behind the high mahogany bench seemed to be
following it attentively, though they irritated her bitterly, sometimes,
by indulging in whispered conversations. Toward the end, though, as
Rodney opened the last phase of his argument, one of them, the
youngest--a man with a thick neck and a square head--hunched forward and
interrupted him with a question; evidently a penetrating one, for the
man sitting across the table from Rodney looked up and grinned, and
interjected a remark of his own.

"I simply followed the cases cited in _Aldrich on Quasi Contracts_," he
said. "I have a copy of the work here, in case Mr. Aldrich didn't bring
one along himself, which I'd be glad to submit to the Court."

Rose gasped. It was his own book they were quoting against him.

"I propose to show," said Rodney, "if the Court please, that an
absolutely vital distinction is to be made between the cases cited in
the section of _Aldrich on Quasi Contracts_, which my honorable opponent
refers to, and the case before the Court."

Then the other judges spoke up. They knew the cases, it appeared, and
didn't want to look at the book, but it was clear that they were
skeptical about the distinction. For five minutes the formal argument
was lost in swift flashing phrases in which everybody took a part.
Rodney was defending himself against them all. And Rose, in an agony
because she couldn't understand it, was reminded, grotesquely enough, of
the Gentleman of France, or some other of the sword-and-cloak heroes of
her girlhood, defending the head of the stairway against the