Of course no papers were in fact served upon anybody and Levine would in due course secure judgment by default for sixty-odd dollars.

Armed with a certified copy of the judgment and a writ of attachment, and accompanied by a burly deputy marshal selected for the ferocity of his appearance, Levine would wait until some opportune time when the owner of the shop was again absent and the shop had been left in charge of the same clerk or a member of the family.

Bursting roughly in, he would demand whether or not it was the intention of the owner to pay the judgment, while at the same moment the deputy would levy on the stock in trade.
The owner of the shop, having been hastily summoned, would return to demand angrily what the rumpus was all about.

By this time the clerk would have recovered his wits sufficiently to denounce the proceeding as an outrage and the suit as baseless.

But his master, who saw judgment against himself for sixty dollars and his goods actually under attachment, was usually in no mood to listen to, much less believe, his clerk's explanations.