Court convened, and the case was called.  As might have been expected, the judge held that under the pleadings it was not a jury case.  The panel was accordingly excused for the day, and joined those curiously inclined in the main body of the room.  The complaining witnesses were called, and under direct examination the essential facts were brought forth, laying the foundation for a legal separation.  The plaintiff was the last witness to testify.  As she told her simple story, a hushed silence fell over the room, every spectator, from the judge on the bench to the sheriff, being eager to catch every syllable of the recital.  But as in duty bound to a client, the attorney for the defendant, a young man who had come from San Antonio to conduct the case, opened a sharp cross-questioning.  As the examination proceeded, an altercation between the attorneys was prevented only by the presence of the sheriff and deputies.  Before the inquiry progressed, the attorney for the plaintiff apologized to the court, pleading extenuating circumstances in the offense offered to his client.  Under his teachings, he informed the court, the purity of womanhood was above suspicion, and no man who wished to be acknowledged as a gentleman among his equals would impugn or question the statement of a lady.  The witness on the stand was more to him than an ordinary client, as her father and himself had been young men together, had volunteered under the same flag, his friend offering up his life in its defense, and he spared to carry home the news of an unmarked grave on a Southern battle-field.  It was a privilege to him to offer his assistance and counsel to-day to a daughter of an old comrade, and any one who had the temerity to offer an affront to this witness would be held to a personal account for his conduct.

The first day was consumed in taking testimony.  The defense introduced much evidence in rebuttal.  Without regard to the truth or their oaths, a line of witnesses were introduced who contradicted every essential point of the plaintiff’s case.  When the credibility of their testimony was attacked, they sought refuge in the technicalities of the law, and were supported by rulings of the presiding judge.  When Oxenford took the stand in his own behalf, there were not a dozen persons present who believed the perjured statements which fell from his lips.  Yet when his testimony was subjected to a rigid cross-questioning, every attempt to reach the truth precipitated a controversy between attorneys as bitter as it was personal.  That the defendant at the bar had escaped prosecution for swindling the government out of large sums of money for a mail service never performed was well known to every one present, including the judge, yet he was allowed to testify against the character of a woman pure as a child, while his own past was protected from exposure by rulings from the bench.