"
"Hear! Hear!" commented O'Brien. "Caput Magnus, otherwise known as Big
Head, there is no doubt but that your fertile brain can easily devise a
way out of our present difficulty."
"Well, I've no time to waste on tramp cases," remarked District
Attorney Peckham. "I've something more important to attend to. Indict
this fellow and send him up quick. Charge him with everything in sight
and trust in the Lord. That's the only thing to be done. Don't bother me
about it, that's all!"
Meantime Mr. Hepplewhite became more and more agitated. Entirely against
his will and, so far as he could see, without any fault of his own, he
suddenly found himself the center of a violent and acrimonious
controversy respecting the fundamental and sacred rights of freemen
which threatened to disrupt society and extinguish the supremacy of the
dominant local political organization.
On the one hand he was acclaimed by the conservative pulpit and press as
a public-spirited citizen who had done exactly the right
thing--disinterestedly enforced the law regardless of his own
convenience and safety as a matter of principle and for the sake of the
community--a moral hero; on the other, though he was president of
several charitable organizations and at least one orphan asylum he was
execrated as a heartless brute, an oppressor of the poor, an octopus, a
soulless capitalist who fattened on the innocent and helpless and
who--Mr.
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