"Please, don't do or say anything to-day to cause a break. I couldn't endure it. You don't know how much your friendship means to me."

"You can never lose that again, Nan," he answered, simply.

"But I must see you. Your visits are the brightest spots in my life. A break with him now would plunge me into abject misery. What are you going to say? Are you going to attack Cal? You don't have to do that, Jim! Promise me you won't, for my sake, if you care nothing for the brilliant future that is just opening before you. You do care something for me in spite of all the wrong I have done you in the past."

The young lawyer remained silent.

"Promise me," she pleaded tenderly, a tear stealing into her dark eyes.

"I'm going to do my level best for my old friend, Nan," he answered with dogged determination. "You needn't worry about your husband. He has the hide of a rhinoceros and nothing I can say will get under his skin."

"But that's just the trouble, Jim, it will. If any other man said it, no; but from you it will cut deeper than you can realize. You are the one man who can hurt him beyond forgiveness, because you're the one man on earth for whom he really cares."

"It will be all right, Nan. Men know how to give and take hard knocks and still be friends. We challenged each other to this duel when there was no other way."

"I never saw him so bent on any one thing in my life. His hatred of Woodman is a mania."

"I'm sorry--I'm fighting for my old friend's life. He wouldn't live in a prison a year. And I'm fighting for the life of his little girl who loves and believes in him as she believes in the goodness of God. If her father is branded a felon, it will kill her."

Nan tried to speak again and her voice failed. At last she said:

"Well, I'm going to sit where I can look straight into your face and if you say or do one thing that will destroy our friendship or ruin your future I shall scream--I know it!"

Stuart smiled and pressed her hand.

"You've too much good sense and self-control for that. I'll risk it.

Now I must hurry. Our case will be called in a few minutes."

He turned abruptly and left her.

In a moment Bivens came out and led his wife to a seat which had been reserved near his.

One of the things which had increased Bivens's nervousness was the fact that the judge ignored his presence in the court room. He had been accustomed to deference from judges. Here was a new thing under the sun--a judge in an insignificant city court who coolly sat on the bench before him for an hour, sentencing criminals, and never even glanced in his direction. Evidently the man didn't know him. It was amazing, this ignorance of the average New Yorker.

The truth, of course, was the old-fashioned Recorder had not been trained as a corporation lawyer. He had fought his own way up in politics from the ranks of the common people. He was a man with red blood in his veins, a man of intense personal likes and dislikes and a fearless dispenser of what he believed to be even-handed justice under the law.

Stuart had based his plan of battle squarely on his knowledge of this judge's character.

As Bivens listened to the sharp ring of his voice pronouncing sentence on evil-doers and saw the officer snap his handcuffs on their wrists his spirits revived. His lawyers were right, after all. Nothing Stuart could say would affect the mind of such a man.

The young lawyer sat in silence beside the bowed form, awaiting his case which the judge, at his request, had placed last. As the moment drew near for the plea his nerve-tension grew intense. Waves of passionate emotion swept his heart. His imagination began to blaze with fires of eloquence that had been his birthright from two generations of great lawyers in the South. Somehow this morning the scene before him stirred his spirit with unusual power. Every crime apparently on the calendar had its origin in the lust for money. Every felon sentenced could have traced his ruin to this curse--thieves, embezzlers, burglars, a man who had killed his partner in a dispute over money, grafters, highwaymen, and last of all, two fallen women who had been amassing a fortune out of the ruin of their sisters.

The figures in the court room grew dim and faded, and out of the mists of the spirit world his excited fancy saw a crooked Red Shape rise over all, stretch forth a long bony hand dripping with blood and filth and begin to throw gold into a black bag. The face was hideous, but a crowd of worshipful admirers followed eagerly in the footsteps of the Red Shape, scrambling and fighting for the coins that slipped through the dripping fingers.

He waked from his day dream with a start, to hear the clerk read in quick tones:

"The People against Henry Woodman."

The judge looked at the dazed prisoner and said:

"What have you to say, Henry Woodman, why sentence should not be imposed upon you for the crime of which you stand convicted by your own plea?"

With a quick movement of his tall figure Stuart was on his feet, every nerve and muscle strung to the highest tension. His long sinewy hands were trembling so violently he could scarcely hold the slip of paper containing the notes he had scrawled for guidance in his address. And yet when he spoke it was with apparent calmness. Only the deep tremulous notes of his voice betrayed his emotion.

"May it please your honour," he slowly began, "I wish to establish to the court before I say anything in behalf of my client, the important fact that he offered to make full restitution of the property taken, that he did this voluntarily before he was even suspected of the crime, and that his offer was refused."

The judge turned to Bivens's lawyers.

"Is this admitted, gentlemen?"

"Without question, your honour," was the instant answer.

The old Recorder lifted his gray eyebrows in surprise, and settled back into his seat with a low grunt.

"I make the fair inference therefore in the beginning," Stuart went on evenly, "that the prosecutor in the case, who appears in this court to-day with an array of distinguished lawyers, whose presence is unnecessary to serve the ends of justice, is here actuated solely by a desire for personal vengeance."

Stuart paused and Bivens moved uneasily in his seat.

"I speak to-day, your honour, in behalf of the man who crouches by my side overwhelmed with shame and grief and conscious dishonour because he took a paltry package of jewellery from a man who has never added one penny to the wealth of the world and yet has somehow gotten possession of one hundred million dollars from those who could not defend themselves from his strength and cunning. This man stands before you now with no shame in his soul, no tears on his cheeks, and with brazen effrontery demands vengeance on a weaker brother.

"Two men are on trial, not one. The majesty of the law has already been vindicated in the tear-stained plea that has been entered. Between these two men the court must decide.

"I am not here to defend the crime of theft. The law of property has long been omnipotent. But I dare to plead with your honour to-day for the beginning of a new, nobler, higher law of humanity--the law that shall place man above his chattel. I shall not ask for the mercy of a light sentence. I am going to appeal to this court for something bigger, more divine. I am going to ask for justice under the higher law of man, whose divine code is yet unwritten, but whose day is surely dawning."

The judge leaned forward with one hand on his cheek, listening intently to the young lawyer's quivering words. Bivens's face had grown livid with excitement, and he sat staring helplessly at the speaker.

"Crime, your honour, is in the heart of man, not in the act he performs. If I shoot at a target, and kill a bystander, the act is not murder. But if I aim at my enemy and kill my friend I have committed murder. Out of the heart are the issues of life. Under the laws of to-day the act of this man is called a crime. Yet who can say that when we shall have slowly emerged from the era of property into the era of man, his act may not be called heroic? Morals are relative things. They are based on the experiences and faith of the generations which express them. Men were once hanged for daring to express an opinion contrary to that held by their parish priest. Such men are to-day the leaders of the world. The proud and cruel silence of ancient Europe has been succeeded by the universal cry for equal justice. And this rising chorus of the world is fast swelling into the deep soul conviction which cries: 'I will not make money out of my brother who is hungry. I refuse to be happy while my sister weeps in shame. I will not caress my own child while that of my neighbour starves!'

"I am not excusing crime. I am crying for the equality of man before the law. The English people beheaded their king because he imposed taxes without the consent of their parliament.

"The millionaire who demands vengeance against this broken man to-day has an income greater than the combined crowned heads of Europe and wields a sceptre mightier than tzar or emperor.

"Why?

"He levies each year millions of taxes without consulting this court, the legislature or any man who walks the earth. He does this by a machine for printing paper-tokens of value called stocks. The essence of theft is to take the property of another without giving a return. A green goods man sells printed paper for money. This mighty man also sells printed paper for money. What is the difference? Neither the green goods, nor the bogus capital called watered stock represents a dollar in real value. Yet we send the green goods man to the penitentiary and bow down before the other as a captain of industry!

"A burglar breaks into a store and robs the safe. A mighty man of money breaks into the management of a corporation which owns an iron mill employing thousands. He shuts down the plant, throws one hundred thousand people into want, passes the dividend, drives the stock down to a few cents on the dollar, buys it for a song from the ruined holders, starts up the mill again and _makes_ five millions! That is to say, he broke into a mill and robbed the safe of five millions. We send the burglar to the penitentiary and hail the manipulator of this stock as a Napoleon of Finance. I am not justifying crime. I demand the enforcement of equal justice among men.

"An enraged Italian stabs his enemy to death. The act is murder. This man corners wheat. Puts up the price of bread a cent a loaf and kills ten thousand children already half-starved from insufficient food. We electrocute the Italian and print pictures of the wheat speculator in our magazines as an example of Success.

"In other words, the theft of five thousand dollars is grand larceny.

The theft of five millions, stained with human blood, is a triumph of business genius.

"But one answer is heard, 'am I my brother's keeper?'

"The man who asks that question will always kill his brother if the temptation comes at the right moment.

"A loaf of bread in England costs two and one-half cents. The same loaf here costs five cents. Who voted to levy a tax of one hundred per cent.