The Coquette’s Victim

Mr. Kent was a very able magistrate. He had sat on the bench for many years and was considered a man of great legal attainments and skill. He very seldom erred in his judgment, and being gifted with a natural shrewdness, he saw the difference at once between a guilty and an innocent man. He rarely erred; long practice had made him an adept in reading faces. But on this morning, the fourteenth of May, he was puzzled. Many cases had been brought before him. Drunken men dismissed with a fine and a reprimand, thieves sentenced to weeks or months of imprisonment, wives with pale faces and bruised arms had given reluctant evidence against husbands who had promised to love and cherish them until death. It was a bright May morning, and the sun did his best to pour through the dusky windows of the police court; a faint beam fell on the stolid faces of the policemen and ushers of the court, the witnesses and the lookers-on; a faint beam that yet, perhaps, brought many messages of bright promise to those present.