The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1920-07-09
By Thane Miller Jones

There were no children-at home
The daughter of whom they seldom
spoke nowadays was an unforgetabIe
-Icrushing memory. When "Reminiscences
linterwove the lost girl into their
speech, eliptics were painfully EN-
lployed.
il 1t was not as though she were dead.
It was not as though they knew that
she was at rest. Fierce-eyed, way.
ward, intolerant, impatient of all re
straint, she had at 16 flung herself, /,
rebel, from their placid, cultured life.
Inexplicably degenerate, she had sui.
lenly thrust aside every arm held out
to her.
Mccullough, as he informed his
wife, had, however, kept more or less
in touch with her, and she was partial.
ly rehabilitated.l He had three years
before gone to Western city and
looked her up. Found her, as he re-
counted to his wife, doing very nicely
Had gone into journalism. Was quite
a hand to write for the papers. Smart
as steel trap! Had been little
foolish, but-he had great hopes that
lshe would make them proud of their
child yet.
In his Office as he sat thinking over
what he had told the little woman he
remembered her tears and her smile
1t repaid him for an enforced absence
of four days. He had then suddenly
remembered something, seized his hat
land gone down to that part of the city
} that he hated. There was rent to pay
Iand-the daughter must be physically
comfortable.
i She greeted him with noisy joviality
HE had gone home and silently
Ismoothed her mothers gray hair as lie
+. kissed her. At any rate she did not
know-that! Thus he gained from
month to month pale happiness in
lshielding the mother.
i And now an ambition to win this
Whalen case to which he had been
sardonically assigned filed McCol
|. lough's thoughts. Office work would
follow an exhibition of foensic acumen
And money was badly needed. Through
the haze Of his beclouded powers he
struggled for two women, one who
kept him alive and one who kept him
dead.
AS he bent over his law books he
, suddenly realized that he had meant
to go down-there. She might be in
J sore need again. He glanced sharply
at his quiet wife. She smiled mildly
land gently patted his arm.
, Don't you think you had better
come to bed now, Newell? Get a
good nights sleep, for you will be oc
cupied in court tomorrow think you
said?"
This simple subtlety soothed the old
lawyer " d odu UCulSAAty. 60
Court work was to be more and more
an everyday affair.
He placed careful mark in his law
! book and went to bed.
The evidence of the prosecution on
the trial of James Whalen was wholly
circumstantial; but Whalen had bad
record-two convictions for house
breaking and one for aggravated as
: sault.
The prosecuting attorney closed the
, States case with quiet confidence and
turned his attention furtively to the
brief in the next case
], McCollough's opening for the de.
| Tense brought his attention back with
la jerk. What? Was that old hick go
ling to cali the prisoner to testify on
!, his own behalf? 1t was dangerous
practice, and doubly dangerous un
! less guiding counsel were skillful to
, forefend the accused from a grilling
, cross-examination. Many man had
, been convicted out of his own mouth
] after an exhausting half-day's bonn
bardment had beaten his defense to a
lpulp.
McCollough's style of advocacy was
Of a decade past. His thin voice was
Ihigh-pitched, his gestures elocution-
larry; his sentences carefully rounded
. his English chaste Futility doomed
large in his vague generalizations.
Clever court lawyers do not, in these
mathematician DAVIS indulge in con.