she and her children suffered from cold and hunger; and during her subsequent illness she and they must have starved and frozen but for the public charities, that would not let anyone in our midst perish from want of necessary food and fuel.  When she recovered from her illness, one relative, a widow now present in court, had from her own narrow means supplied the money to rent and furnish a small schoolroom, and this most hapless of women was once more put in a way to earn daily bread for herself and children.  Nine years passed, during which she enjoyed a respite from the persecutions of the plaintiff.  In these nine years, by strict attention to business, untiring industry, she not only paid off the debt owed to her aged relative, but she bought a little cottage and garden in a cheap suburb, and furnished the house and stocked the garden.  She was now living a laborious but contented life and rearing her children in comfort.  But now at the end of nine years comes back the plaintiff.  Her husband?  No, her enemy! for he comes, not as he pretends, to cherish and protect; but as he ever came before, to lay waste and destroy!  How long could it be supposed that the mother would be able to keep the roof over the heads of her children if the plaintiff were permitted to enter beneath it? if the court did not protect her home against his invasion, he would again bring ruin and desolation within its walls.  They would prove by competent witnesses every point in this statement of the defendant’s case; and then he would demand for his client, not only that she should be secured in the undisturbed possession of her children, her property, and her earnings, but that the plaintiff should be required to contribute an annual sum of money to the support of the defendant and her children, and to give security for its payment.

“That’s ‘carrying the war into Africa’ with a vengeance,” whispered Walsh to his counsel, as Ishmael concluded his address.

He then called the witnesses for the defendant.  They were numerous and of the highest respectability.  Among them was the pastor of her parish, her family physician, and many of the patrons of her school.

They testified to the facts stated by her attorney.

The three giants did their duty in the cross-examining line of business.  Wiseman cross-examined in a stern manner; Berners in an insinuating way; and Vivian in a sarcastic style; but the only effect of their forensic skill was to bring out the truth from the witnesses—­more clearly, strongly, and impressively.

When the last witness for the defendant had been permitted to leave the stand Wiseman arose to address the court on behalf of the plaintiff.  He spoke in his own peculiar sledge-hammer style, sonorously striking the anvil and ringing all the changes upon law, custom, precedent, and so forth that always gave the children into the custody of the father.  And he ended by demanding that the children be at once delivered over to his client.