"We'll lose the case," calculated Stillwater; "we'll
save our friends, and get rid of Craig, whom everybody will blame
--the damned, bumptious, sophomoric blow-hard!"
What excuse did Stillwater make to himself for himself in this
course of seeming treachery and assassination? For, being a man of
the highest principles, he would not deliberately plan an
assassination as an assassination. Why, his excuse was that the
popular clamor against the men "who had built up the Western
country" was wicked, that he was serving his country in denying
the mob "the blood of our best citizens," that Josh Craig was a
demagogue who richly deserved to be hoist by his own petar. He
laughed with patriotic glee as he thought how "Josh, the joke"
would make a fool of himself with silly, sophomoric arguments,
would with his rude tactlessness get upon the nerves of the
finicky old Justices of the Supreme Court!
As Craig had boasted right and left of the "tear" he was going to
make, and had urged everybody he talked with to come and hear him,
the small courtroom was uncomfortably full, and not a few of the
smiling, whispering spectators confidently expected that they were
about to enjoy that rare, delicious treat--a conceited braggart
publicly exposed and overwhelmed by himself.
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