When the General sat down, he did it with the conviction that if there was anything in good strong testimony, a great speech and believing and admiring countenances all around, Mr. Morgan’s case was killed.  Ex-Governor Roop leant his head upon his hand for some minutes, thinking, and the still audience waited for his decision.  Then he got up and stood erect, with bended head, and thought again.  Then he walked the floor with long, deliberate strides, his chin in his hand, and still the audience waited.  At last he returned to his throne, seated himself, and began impressively: 

“Gentlemen, I feel the great responsibility that rests upon me this day.  This is no ordinary case.  On the contrary it is plain that it is the most solemn and awful that ever man was called upon to decide.  Gentlemen, I have listened attentively to the evidence, and have perceived that the weight of it, the overwhelming weight of it, is in favor of the plaintiff Hyde.  I have listened also to the remarks of counsel, with high interest—­and especially will I commend the masterly and irrefutable logic of the distinguished gentleman who represents the plaintiff.  But gentlemen, let us beware how we allow mere human testimony, human ingenuity in argument and human ideas of equity, to influence us at a moment so solemn as this.  Gentlemen, it ill becomes us, worms as we are, to meddle with the decrees of Heaven.  It is plain to me that Heaven, in its inscrutable wisdom, has seen fit to move this defendant’s ranch for a purpose.  We are but creatures, and we must submit.  If Heaven has chosen to favor the defendant Morgan in this marked and wonderful manner; and if Heaven, dissatisfied with the position of the Morgan ranch upon the mountain side, has chosen to remove it to a position more eligible and more advantageous for its owner, it ill becomes us, insects as we are, to question the legality of the act or inquire into the reasons that prompted it.  No—­Heaven created the ranches and it is Heaven’s prerogative to rearrange them, to experiment with them around at its pleasure.  It is for us to submit, without repining.

“I warn you that this thing which has happened is a thing with which the sacrilegious hands and brains and tongues of men must not meddle.  Gentlemen, it is the verdict of this court that the plaintiff, Richard Hyde, has been deprived of his ranch by the visitation of God!  And from this decision there is no appeal.”

Buncombe seized his cargo of law-books and plunged out of the court-room frantic with indignation.  He pronounced Roop to be a miraculous fool, an inspired idiot.  In all good faith he returned at night and remonstrated with Roop upon his extravagant decision, and implored him to walk the floor and think for half an hour, and see if he could not figure out some sort of modification of the verdict.  Roop yielded at last and got up to walk.  He walked two hours and a half, and at last his face lit up happily and he told Buncombe it had occurred to him that the ranch underneath the new Morgan ranch still belonged to Hyde, that his title to the ground was just as good as it had ever been, and therefore he was of opinion that Hyde had a right to dig it out from under there and—­