advance it for you.” It is needless to add that the clerk invariably advanced the money, or that when the Court adjourned the Judge instantly reimbursed him. In one instance only did the sturdy culprit—either from “pure cussedness” or a weaker desire to spare the Judge the expense of his conviction—refuse to borrow the amount of the fine from the clerk. He was accordingly remanded to the County Jail. It is related—on tolerably good authority—that when the Court had adjourned the Court was seen, in spotless linen and yellow gloves, making in the direction of the County Jail—a small adobe building, which also served as a Hall of Records; that, after ostentatiously consulting certain records, the Court entered the Jail as if in casual official inspection; that, later in the evening, the Deputy Sheriff having charge of the prisoner was dispatched for a bottle of whiskey and a pack of cards. But as the story here alleges that the Deputy, that evening, lost the amount of his month’s stipend and the Court its entire yearly salary to the prisoner, in a friendly game of “cut-throat euchre,” to relieve the tedium of the prisoner’s confinement, the whole story has been denied, as incompatible with Judge Trott’s dignity, though not inconsistent with his kindliness of nature.

It is certain, however, that his lenity would have brought him into disfavor but for a redeeming exhibition of his unofficial strength. A young and talented lawyer from Sacramento had been detained in some civil case before Judge Trott, but, confident of his success on appeal from this primitive tribunal, he had scarcely concealed his contempt for it in his closing argument. Judge Trott, when he had finished, sat unmoved save for a slight coloring of his high cheek-bones. But here I must again borrow the graphic language of a spectator: “When the Judge had hung out them air red danger signals he sez, quite peaceful- like, to that yer Sacramento Shrimp, sez he, ‘Young gentleman,’ sez he, ‘do you know that I could fine ye fifty dollars for contempt o’ Court?’ ‘And if ye could,’ sez the shrimp, peart and sassy as a hossfly, ‘I reckon I could pay it.’ ‘But I ought to add,’ sez the Gentleman, sad-like, ‘that I don’t purpose to do it. I believe in freedom of speech and—action!’ He then rises up, onlimbers hisself, so to speak, stretches out that yer Hand o’ Providence o’ his, lites into that yer shrimp, lifts him up and scoots him through the window twenty feet into the ditch. ‘Call the next case,’ sez he, sittin’ down again, with them big white eyes o’ his looking peaceful-like ez if nothin’ partikler had happened.”

Happy would it have been for the Gentleman had these gentle eccentricities produced no greater result. But a fatal and hitherto unexpected weakness manifested itself in the very court in which he had triumphed, and for a time imperiled his popularity. A lady of dangerous antecedents and great freedom of manner, who was the presiding goddess of the “Wheel of Fortune” in the principal gambling-saloon of La Porte, brought an action against several of its able-bodied citizens for entering the saloon with “force and arms” and destroying the peculiar machinery of her game. She was ably supported by counsel, and warmly sympathized with by a gentleman who was not her husband. Yet in spite of this valuable coöperation she was not successful. The offense was clearly proved; but the jury gave a verdict in favor of the defendants, without leaving their seats.

Judge Trott turned his mild, inoffensive eyes upon them.

“Do I understand you to say that this is your final verdict?”

“You kin bet your boots, Your Honor,” responded the foreman with cheerful but well-meaning irreverence, “that that’s about the way the thing points.”

“Mr. Clerk,” said Judge Trott, “record the verdict, and then enter my resignation as Judge of this court.”

He rose and left the bench. In vain did various influential citizens follow him with expostulations; in vain did they point out the worthlessness of the plaintiff and the worthlessness of her cause—in which he had sacrificed himself. In vain did the jury intimate that his resignation was an insult to them. Judge Trott turned abruptly upon the foreman, with the old ominous glow in his high cheek-bones.

“I didn’t understand you,” said he.