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ing off-set, your Honour." Here Mr. Norton motioned to Abner, who heaved the meal sack up on the table.

For a full half minute the peculiar dusty silence of the courtroom was complete. The trap was sprung, but for that length of time nobody understood it. Then the lawyer from Nashville apprehended the sort of pitfall into which his client had stumbled. He jumped to his feet.

"Your Honour!" he cried in a clipped urban voice. "You will not allow any such fantastic claim of off-set against an honest debt owing to the Irontown Bank. Why, this is ingenious, but it's outrageous! It's a tax of two per cent. upon the entire volume of business transacted by the bank throughout its career. It's against public policy!"

Mr. Perry Northcutt understood next, and his face went white to his lips. He leaped up from his chair again.

"Your Honour! Your Honour! There are not Railroad Jones's debts! It's impossible for a bank to do its—its short-time business at six per cent.—the paper work . . ."

"Why, y-y-yes, they are his debts, Mr. Northcutt," stammered Norton genially, "h-he bought 'em."

A realization of Railroad Jones's greatest coup spread slowly and marvellingly over the courthouse, and with it came an outburst of cheers, whoops, stamping of feet, and uproarious laughter. The exquisite delight of seeing the unpopular Northcutt bowled over with all his lawyers by the champion from Lanesburg shook the audience.

The chancellor hammered for order.

"Clear the courtroom, Mr. Sheriff!" he cried with a sweeping gesture.

The officers turned out of the chancel into the aisles and started trying to evict the whole crowd. Order was restored almost as rapidly as it had been lost, save for irrepressible explosions from some of the more convulsed.

At last the judge ceased turning his angry eyes about the room and looked at Mr. Norton.

"How much is the off-set, Mr. Norton?"

"Two-two hundred and eighty-five thousand d-dollars,