Spring
had come.
Then through the thickening greenery the dogwood shone like belated
drifts, the flashing warblers passed on into the north, the bobolink had
arrived, the robin was already overeating, the whole chorus of birds
that had come to nest and stay broke forth, and it was summer.
Leonard was back in his own town, enriched with new esteem from the
public and from the men of his profession. The noted case was won, a
victory for the peace and dignity of the state, due wholly, it was said,
to the energy and sagacity of the young district attorney. A murder had
been so cunningly done that suspicion could fasten nowhere, until
Byington laid his finger upon a man of so unspotted a name that no one
else had had the mental courage to point to him. Through a long and
masterly untangling of contradictions the state's counsel had so
overwhelmingly proved him guilty that he had confessed without waiting
for the jury's verdict.
"Yes," said many, "it was a great stroke, Leonard's management of that
thing." And not a few added that it had made him an older man--"that or
something." Those who were of his politics, and even some who were not,
stopped him in Main Street and State Street to "shake" and to say,
without too much care for logical sequence, how soon, in their opinion,
he would be the commonwealth's "favorite son."
"My dear Mrs. Morris," said the General, "every town has at least one.
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