Then the judge took his crack.  He told the jury, in so many words, to pay no attention to either the A.D.A. or to Mr. Tutt, and to listen only to him, because he was the whole thing.  The question was:  Had the defendant assumed to give medical treatment to Brown’s horse, for any kind of valuable consideration?  In determining this they should consider all the evidence, including the fact that the prisoner had claimed to be a veterinary, had been paid for treating Brown’s horse as such, had pleaded guilty in the police court, and that none of the alleged facts upon which the charge was based had been denied before them in present trial.

As he said this the pink-and-white baboon looked at them steadily and significantly for several seconds over his eyeglasses.  They should consider the business card which the defendant had given to the complaining witness and in which he held himself out as a veterinary.  The testimony of the complainant stood uncontradicted.  The complainant was not an accomplice and his testimony did not have to be corroborated.  A decoy wasn’t an accomplice.  That was the law.  Neither was what had passed between the complainant and defendant privileged as a confidential communication, because the complainant was not a physician.  That was all there was to that!

They should ask themselves what in fact the defendant had done if not practise veterinary medicine without a license?  It was not controverted but that he had said he was a veterinary, administered medicine to a sick horse, offered to compound payment for medical treatment for himself, finally taken five dollars, and admitted his guilt before the magistrate.  If they had any reasonable doubt—­and such a doubt might of course be raised by evidence of previous good character—­they would of course give it to the defendant and acquit him, but such a doubt must be no mere whim, guess or conjecture that the defendant might not after all be guilty even if the evidence seemed so to demonstrate; it must be a substantial doubt based on the evidence and such a one as would influence them in the important matters of their own daily, domestic and business lives.  That was all there was to it!  Let them take the case and decide it!  It should not take ’em very long.  The question of how the defendant should be punished, if at all, did not concern them.  He would take care of that.  They might safely leave it to him!  He bowed and turned to his papers.  The jury gathered up their coats and straggled after Cap Phelan out of the court room.

“Y’d be all right, counselor,” remarked the second court officer, suspending momentarily the delights of mastication, “if ’twasn’t fer that son of a gun on the back row, Gibson!  He’s a bad one!  I’ve known him for years!  He’d convict his own mother of petit larceny!”

“So?  So?” murmured Mr. Tutt, producing a leather case the size of a doctor’s instrument bag from his inside pocket and removing a couple of stogies therefrom.  “Well, it’s too late now to do anything about it.  I’m going out to stretch my legs and have a smoke.”