“The question is a proper one.  Answer it,” directed the judge.

“No, I’m not a licensed doctor.”

“Well, didn’t you treat Mr. Lowry?”

The jury by this time had caught the drift of the examination and were listening with intent appreciation.

Mr. Brown leaned forward, a sickening smile of sneering superiority curling about his yellow molars.

“Ah!” he cried.  “That’s where I have you, sir!  I only pretended to treat him.  I didn’t really.  I only scribbled something on a piece of paper.”

“You knew he couldn’t read, of course?”

“Sure.”

Mr. Tutt turned to the uplifted faces of the twelve.  “So,” he retorted, pursing his wrinkled lips and placing his fingers together in that attitude of piety which we frequently observe upon effigies of defunct ecclesiastics—­“so you did the very thing for which you threw this old man at my side into jail—­and for which he is now on trial!  You lied to him about being a doctor!  You deceived him about giving him the medical treatment he so much needed!  And you arrested him after he had worked for hours to relieve the sufferings of a sick animal.  By the way, it was a sick animal, wasn’t it?”

“The sickest I could find,” replied Brown airily.

“And he did relieve its sufferings, did he not?” continued Mr. Tutt gently.

“Very likely.  I wasn’t particularly interested in that end of it.”

Mr. Tutt’s meager frame seemed suddenly to expand until he hung over the witness chair like the genii who mushroomed so unexpectedly out of the fisherman’s bottle in the Arabian Nights Entertainments.

“You were not interested in ministering to a poor horse, so sick it could hardly stand!  You were only interested in imprisoning and depriving of his only form of livelihood this old man whose heart was not hardened like yours!  May I ask at whose instance you went and lied to him?”

“Mr. Tutt!  Mr. Tutt!” interjected the octogenarian angel.  “Your examination is exceeding the bounds of judicial propriety.”

Ephraim Tutt bowed low.

“A thousand pardons, Your Honor!  My emotions swept me away!  I most humbly apologize!  But when this witness so unblushingly confesses how he played the scoundrel’s part, aged case hardened practitioner as I am, my heart cries out against such infamous treachery—­”

Bang! went the judge’s gavel.

“You are only making it worse!” declared the court severely.  “Proceed with your examination.”

“Very well, Your Honor!” replied Mr. Tutt, his lips trembling with well-simulated indignation.  “Now, sir, who instigated this miserable deception—­I beg Your Honor’s pardon!  Who put you up to this game—­I mean, this course of conduct?”

“Nobody,” replied Brown in a surly tone.

“Did you ever hear of the United Association of Veterinaries of the Greater City of New York—­sometimes referred to as The Horse Leeches’ Union?” asked Mr. Tutt insinuatingly.