Long before the hour appointed for the resumption of the trial of
Ralph Ray, a great crowd filled the Market Place at Carlisle, and
lined the steps of the old Town Hall, to await the opening of the
doors. As the clock in the cupola was striking ten, three men inside
the building walked along the corridor to unbar the public entrance.
“I half regret it,” said one; “you have forced me into it. I should
never have touched it but for you.”
“Tut, man,” whispered another, “you saw how it was going. With yon man
on the bench and yon other crafty waistrel at the bar, the chance was
wellnigh gone. What hope was there of a conviction?”
“None, none; never make any more botherment about it, Master Lawson,”
said the third.
“The little tailor is safe. He can do no harm as a witness.”
“I'm none so sure of that,” rejoined the first speaker.
The door was thrown open and the three men stepped aside to allow the
crush to pass them. One of the first to enter was Mrs. Garth. The
uncanny old crone cast a quick glance about her as she came in with
the rest, hooded close against the cold. Her eyes fell on one of the
three men who stood apart. For a moment she fixed her gaze steadfastly
upon him, and then the press from behind swept her forward. But in
that moment she had exchanged a swift and unmistakable glance of
recognition. The man's face twitched slightly. He looked relieved when
the woman had passed on.
Dense as had been the throng that filled the court on the earlier
hearing, the throng was now even yet more dense. The benches usually
provided for the public had been removed, and spectators stood on
every inch of the floor. Some crept up to the windows, and climbed on
to the window boards. One or two daring souls clambered over the
shoulders of their fellows to the principals of the roof, and sat
perched across them. The old court house was paved and walled with
people.
From the entrance at the western end the occupants of the seats before
the table filed in one by one. The first to come was the sheriff,
Wilfrey Lawson. With papers in hand, he stationed himself immediately
under the jurors' box and facing the bar. Then came the clerk of the
court, who was making an ostentatious display of familiarity with
counsel for the King, who walked half a pace behind him.
The judges took their seats. As they entered, the gentleman of the
rubicund complexion was chatting in a facetious vein with his brother
judge, who, however, relaxed but little of the settled austerity of
his countenance under the fire of many jests.
Silence was commanded, and Ralph Ray was ordered to the bar. He had
scarcely taken his place there when the name of Simeon Stagg was also
called. For an instant Ralph looked amazed. The sheriff observed his
astonishment and smiled. The next moment Sim was by his side. His face
was haggard; his long gray-and-black hair hung over his temples. He
was led in. He clutched feverishly at the rail in front. He had not
yet lifted his eyes. After a moment he raised them, and met the eyes
of Ralph turned towards him. Then he shuffled and sidled up to Ralph's
elbow. The people stretched their necks to see the unexpected
prisoner.
After many preliminary formalities it was announced that the grand
jury had found a true bill for murder against the two prisoners.
The indictment was read. It charged Ralph Ray and Simeon Stagg with
having murdered with malice aforethought James Wilson, agent to the
King's counsel.
The prisoners were told to plead. Ralph answered promptly and in a
clear tone, “Not Guilty.” Sim hesitated, looked confused, stammered,
lifted his eyes as if inquiringly to Ralph's face, then muttered
indistinctly, “Not Guilty.”
The judges exchanged glances. The clerk, with a sneer on his lip,
mumbled something to counsel. The spectators turned with a slight
bustle among themselves. Their pleas had gone against the
prisoners--at least against Ralph.
When the men at the bar were asked how they would be tried, Ralph
turned to the bench and said he had been kept close prisoner for seven
days, none having access to him. Was he to be called to trial, not
knowing the charge against him until he was ordered to the bar?
No attention was paid to his complaint, and the jury was empanelled.
Then counsel rose, and with the customary circumlocution opened the
case against the prisoners. In the first place, he undertook to
indicate the motive and occasion of the horrid, vile, and barbarous
crime which had been committed, and which, he declared, scarce
anything in the annals of justice could parallel; then, he would set
forth the circumstances under which the act was perpetrated; and,
finally, he proposed to show what grounds existed for inferring that
the prisoners were guilty thereof.
He told the court that the deceased James Wilson, as became him
according to the duty of his secret office, had been a very zealous
person. In his legal capacity he had sought and obtained a warrant for
the arrest of the prisoner Ray. That warrant had never been served.
Why? The dead body of Wilson had been found at daybreak in a lonely
road not far from the homes of both prisoners. The warrant was not on
the body. It had been missing to that day. His contention would be
that the prisoners had obtained knowledge of the warrant; that they
had waylaid the deceased agent in a place and at a time most
convenient for the execution of their murderous design. With the
cunning of clever criminals, they had faced the subsequent coroner's
inquiry. One of them, being the less artful, had naturally come under
suspicion. The other, a cunning and dangerous man, had even taken an
active share in defending his confederate. But being pursued by a
guilty conscience, they dared not stay at the scene of their crime,
and both had fled from their homes. All this would be justified by
strong and undeniable circumstances.
Counsel resumed his seat amid the heavy breathings and inaudible
mutterings of the throng behind him. He was proceeding to call his
witnesses, when Ralph asked to be heard.
“Is it the fact that I surrendered of my own free will and choice?”
“It is.” “Is it assumed that I was prompted to that step also by a
guilty conscience?”
Counsel realized that he was placed on the horns of a dilemma.
Ignoring Ralph, he said,--
“My lords, the younger prisoner _did_ surrender. He surrendered to a
warrant charging him with conspiring to subvert the King's authority.
He threw himself on the mercy of his Sovereign, and claimed the
benefit of the pardon. And why? To save himself from indictment on the
capital charge; at the price, peradventure, of a fine or a year's
imprisonment to save himself from the gallows. Thus he tried to
hoodwink the law; but, my lords,”--and counsel lifted himself to his
utmost height,--“the law is not to be hoodwinked.”
“God forfend else!” echoed Justice Millet, shifting in his seat and
nodding his head with portentous gravity.
“I was loath to interrupt you,” said Justice Hide, speaking calmly and
for the first time, “or I should have pointed out wherein your
statement did not correspond with the facts of the prisoner Ray's
conduct as I know it. Let us without delay hear the witnesses.”
The first witness called was a woman thinly and poorly clad, who came
to the box with tears in her eyes, and gave the name of Margaret
Rushton. Ralph recognized her as the young person who had occasioned a
momentary disturbance near the door towards the close of the previous
trial. Sim recognized her also, but his recollection dated farther
back.
She described herself as the wife of a man who had been outlawed, and
whose estates had been sequestered. She had been living the life of a
vagrant woman.
“Was your husband named John Rushton?” asked Ralph.
“Yes,” she replied meekly, and all but inaudibly.
“John Rushton of Aberleigh!”
“The same.”
“Did you ever hear him speak of an old comrade--Ralph Ray?”
“Yes, yes,” answered the witness, lifting her hands to her face and
sobbing aloud.
“The prisoner wastes the time of the court. Let us proceed.”
Ralph saw the situation at a glance. The woman's evidence--whatever it
might be--was to be forced from her. “Have you seen these prisoners
before?”
“Yes, one of them.”
“Perhaps both?”
“Yes, perhaps both.”
“Pray tell my lords and the jury what you know concerning them.”
The woman tried to speak and stopped, tried again and stopped.
Counsel, coming to her relief, said,--
“It was in Wythburn you saw them; when was that?”
“I passed through it with my two children at Martinmas,” the witness
began falteringly.
“Tell my lords and the jury what happened then.”
“I had passed by the village, and had come to a cottage that stood at
the angle of two roads. The morning was cold, and my poor babies were
crying. Then it came on to rain. So I knocked at the cottage, and an
old man opened the door.”
“Do you see the old man in this court?”
“Yes--there,” pointing to where Sim stood in the dock with downcast
eyes.
There was a pause.
“Come, good woman, let my lords and the jury hear what further you
know of this matter. You went into the cottage!”
“He said I might warm the children at the fire; their little limbs
were as cold as stone.”
“Well, well?”
“He seemed half crazed, I thought; but he was very kind to me and my
little ones. He gave them some warm milk, and said we might stay till
the weather cleared. It did not clear all day. Towards nightfall the
old man's daughter came home. She was a dear fine girl, God bless
her!”
The silence of the court was only disturbed by a stifled groan from
the bar, where Sim still stood with downcast eyes. Ralph gazed through
a blinding mist at the rafters overhead.
“She nursed the little ones, and gave them oaten cake and barley
bread. The good people were poor themselves; I could see they were. It
rained heavier than ever, so the young woman made a bed for us in a
little room, and we slept in the cottage until morning.”
“Was anything said concerning the room you slept in?” “They said it
was their lodger's room; but he was away, and would not return until
the night following.”
“Next day you took the road towards the North?”
“Yes, towards Carlisle. They told me that if my husband were ever
taken he would be brought to Carlisle. That was why I wished to get
here. But I had scarce walked a mile--I had a baby at the breast and a
little boy who could just toddle beside me--I had scarce walked a mile
before the boy became ill, and could not walk. I first thought to go
back to the cottage, but I was too weak to carry both children. So I
sat with my little ones by the roadside.”
The witness paused again. Ralph was listening with intense eagerness.
He was leaning over the rail before him to catch every syllable. When
the woman had regained some composure he said quietly,--
“There is a bridge thereabouts that spans a river. Which side of the
bridge were you then?”
“The Carlisle side; that is to say, the north.”
The voice of counsel interrupted a further inquiry.
“Pray tell my lords and the jury what else you know, good woman.”
“We should have perished of cold where we sat, but looking up I saw
that there was a barn in a field close by. It was open to the front,
but it seemed to be sheltered on three sides, and had some hay in it.
So I made my way to it through a gate, and carried the children.”
“What happened while you were there?--quick, woman, let us get to the
wicked fact itself.”
“We stayed there all day, and when the night came on I covered the
little ones in the hay, and they cried themselves to sleep.”
The tears were standing in the woman's eyes. The eyes of others were
wet.
“Yes, yes, but what _occurred?_” said counsel, to whom the weeping of
outcast babes was obviously less than an occurrence.
“_I_ could not sleep,” said the woman hoarsely; and lifting her voice
to a defiant pitch, she said, “Would that the dear God had let me
sleep that night of all nights of my life!”
“Come, good woman,” said counsel more soothingly, “what next?”
“I listened to the footsteps that went by on the road, and so the
weary hours trailed on. At last they had ceased to come and go. It was
then that I heard a horse's canter far away to the north.”
The witness was speaking in a voice so low as to be scarcely audible
to the people, who stood on tiptoe and held their breath to hear.
“My little boy cried in his sleep. Then all was quiet again.”
Sim shuddered perceptibly. He felt his flesh creep.
“The thought came to me that perhaps the man on the horse could give
me something to do the boy good. If he came from a distance, he would
surely carry brandy. So I labored out of the barn and trudged through
the grass to the hedge. Then I heard footsteps on the road. They were
coming towards me.”
“Was it dark?”
“Yes, but not very dark. I could see the hedge across the way. The man
on foot and the man on the horse came together near where I stood.”
“How near--twenty paces?”
“Less. I was about to call, when I heard the man on foot speak to the
other, who was riding past him.”
“You saw both men clearly?”
“No,” replied the woman firmly; “not clearly. I saw the one on the
road. He was a little man, and he limped in his walk.”
In the stillness of the court Ralph could almost hear the woman
breathe.
“They were quarrelling, the two men; you heard what they said?” said
counsel, breaking silence.
“It's not true,” cried the witness, in a hurried manner, “_I_ heard
nothing.”
“This is no suborned witness, my lords,” said counsel in a cold voice,
and with a freezing smile. “Well, woman?”
“The tall man leapt off his horse, and there was a struggle. The
little man was swearing. There was a heavy fall, and all was quiet
once more.”
As she spoke the woman recoiled to the back of the box, and covered
her face in her hands.
“What manner of man was the taller one?” “He had a strong face with
big features and large eyes. I saw him indistinctly.”
“Do you see him now?”.
“I cannot swear; but--but I think I do.”
“Is the prisoner who stands to the left the man you saw that night?”
“The voice is the same, the face is similar, and he wears the same
habit--a long dark coat lined with light flannel.”
“Is that all you know of the matter?”
“I knew that a crime had been committed in my sight. I felt that a
dead body lay close beside me. I was about to turn away, when I heard
a third man come up and speak to the man on the horse.”
“You knew the voice?”
“It was the cottager who had given us shelter. I ran back to the barn,
snatched up my two children in their sleep, and fled away across the
fields--I know not where.”
Justice Hide asked the witness why she had not spoken of this before;
three months had elapsed since then.
She replied that she had meant to do so, but it came into her mind
that perhaps the cottager was somehow concerned in the crime, and she
remembered how good he and his daughter had been to her.
“How had she come to make the disclosures now?”
The witness explained that when she crushed her way into the court a
week ago it was with the idea that the prisoner might be her husband.
He was not her husband, but when she saw his face she remembered that
she had seen him before. A man in the body of the court had followed
her out and asked her questions.
“Who was the man?” asked the judge, turning to the sheriff.
The gentleman addressed pointed to a man near at hand, who rose at
this reference, with a smile of mingled pride and cunning, as though
he felt honored by this public disclosure of his astuteness. He was a
small man with a wrinkled face, and a sinister cast in one of his
eyes, which lay deep under shaggy brows. We have met him before.
The judge looked steadily at him as he rose in his place. After a
minute or two he turned again to look at him. Then he made some note
on a paper in his hand.
The witness looked jaded and worn with the excitement. During her
examination Sim had never for an instant upraised his eyes from the
ground. The eagerness with which Ralph had watched her was written in
every muscle of his face. When liberty was given him to question her,
he asked in a soft and tender voice if she knew what time of the night
it might be when she had seen what she had described.
Between nine and ten o'clock as near as she could say, perhaps fully
ten.
Was she sure which side of the bridge she was on--north or south?
“Sure; it was north of the bridge.”
Ralph asked if the records of the coroner's inquiry were at hand. They
were not. Could he have them examined? It was needless. But why?
“Because,” said Ralph, “it was sworn before the coroner that the body
was found to the south of the bridge--fifty yards to the south of it.”
The point was treated with contempt and some derisive laughter. When
Ralph pressed it, there was humming and hissing in the court.
“We must not expect that we can have exact and positive proof,” said
Justice Millet; “we would come as near as we can to circumstances by
which a fact of this dark nature can be proved. It is easy for a
witness to be mistaken on such a point.”
The young woman Margaret Rushton was being dismissed.
“One word,” said Justice Hide. “You say you have heard your husband
speak of the prisoner Ray; how has he spoken of him?”
“How?--as the bravest gentleman in all England!” said the woman
eagerly.
Sim lifted his head, and clutched the rail. “God--it's true, it's
true!” he cried hysterically, in a voice that ran through the court.
“My lords,” said counsel, “you have heard the truth wrung from a
reluctant witness, but you have not heard all the circumstances of
this horrid fact. The next witness will prove the motive of the
crime.”
A burly Cumbrian came into the box, and gave the name of Thomas
Scroope. He was an agent to the King's counsel. Ralph glanced at him.
He was the man who insulted the girl in Lancaster.
He said he remembered the defendant Ray as a captain in the trained
bands of the late Parliament. Ray was always proud and arrogant. He
had supplanted the captain whose captaincy he afterwards held.
“When was that?”
“About seven years agone,” rejoined the witness; adding in an
undertone, and as though chuckling to himself, “he's paid dear enough
for that sin' then.”
Ralph interrupted.
“Who was the man I supplanted, as you say--the man who has made me pay
dear for it, as you think?”
No answer.
“Who?”
“No matter that,” grumbled the witness. His facetiousness was gone.
There was some slight stir beneath the jurors' box.
“Tell the court the name of the man you mean.”
Counsel objected to the time of the court being wasted with such
questions.
Justice Hide overruled the objection.
Amid much sensation, the witness gave the name of the sheriff of
Cumberland, Wilfrey Lawson.
Continuing his evidence in a defiant manner, the witness said he
remembered the deceased agent, James Wilson. He saw him last the day
before his death. It was in Carlisle they met. Wilson showed witness a
warrant with which he was charged for Ray's arrest, and told him that
Ray had often threatened him in years past, and that he believed he
meant to take his life. Wilson had said that he intended to be
beforehand, for the warrant was a sure preventive. He also said that
the Rays were an evil family; the father was a hard, ungrateful brute,
who had ill repaid him for six years' labor. The mother was best; but
then she was only a poor simple fool. The worst of the gang was this
Ralph, who in the days of the Parliament had more than once threatened
to deliver him--Wilson--to the sheriff--the other so-called sheriff,
not the present good gentleman.
Ralph asked the witness three questions.
“Have we ever met before?”
“Ey, but we'll never meet again, I reckon,” said the man, with a
knowing wink.
“Did you serve under me in the army of the Parliament?”
“Nowt o' t' sort,” with a growl.
“Were you captured by the King's soldiers, and branded with a hot
iron, as a spy of their own who was suspected of betraying them?”
“It's a' a lie. I were never brandet.”
“Pull up the right sleeves of your jerkin and sark.”
The witness refused.
Justice Hide called on the keeper to do so.
The witness resisted, but the sleeves were drawn up to the armpit. The
flesh showed three clear marks as of an iron band.
The man was hurried away, amid hissing in the court.
The next witness was the constable, Jonathan Briscoe. He described
being sent after Wilson early on the day following that agent's
departure from Carlisle. His errand was to bring back the prisoner. He
arrived at Wythburn in time to be present at the inquest. The prisoner
Stagg was then brought up and discharged.
Ralph asked if it was legal to accuse a man a second time of the same
offence.
Justice Millet ruled that the discharge of a coroner (even though he
were a resident justice as well) was no acquittal.
The witness remembered how at the inquiry the defendant Ray had
defended his accomplice. He had argued that it was absurd to suppose
that a man of Stagg's strength could have killed Wilson by a fall.
Only a more powerful man could have done so.
“Had you any doubt as to who that more powerful man might be?”
“None, not I. I knew that the man whose game it was to have the
warrant was the likest man to have grabbed it. It warn't on the body.
There was not a scrap of evidence against Ray, or I should have taken
him then and there.”
“You tried to take him afterwards, and failed.”
“That's true enough. The man has the muscles of an ox.”
The next two witnesses were a laborer from Wythburn, who spoke again
to passing Sim on the road on the night of the murder, and meeting
Wilson a mile farther north, and Sim's landlord, who repeated his
former evidence.
There was a stir in the court as counsel announced his last witness. A
woman among the spectators was muttering something that was inaudible
except to the few around her. The woman was Mrs. Garth. Willy Ray
stood near her, but could not catch her words.
The witness stepped into the box. There was no expression of surprise
on Ralph's face when he saw who stood there to give evidence against
him. It was the man who had been known in Lancaster as his “Shadow”;
the same that had (with an earlier witness) been Robbie Anderson's
companion in his night journey on the coach; the same that passed
Robbie as he lay unconscious in Reuben Thwaite's wagon; the same that
had sat in the bookseller's snug a week ago; the same that Mrs. Garth
had recognized in the corridor that morning; the same that Justice
Hide had narrowly scrutinized when he rose in the court to claim the
honor of ferreting the facts out of the woman Rushton.
He gave the name of Mark Wilson.
“Your name again?” said Justice Hide, glancing at a paper in his hand.
“Mark Wilson.”
Justice Hide beckoned the sheriff and whispered something. The sheriff
crushed his way into an inner room.
“The deceased James Wilson was your brother?”
“He was.”
“Tell my lords and the jury what you know of this matter.”
“My brother was a zealous agent of our gracious King,” said the
witness, speaking in a tone of great humility. “He even left his
home--his wife and family--in the King's good cause.”
At this moment Sim was overtaken by faintness. He staggered, and would
have fallen. Ralph held him up, and appealed to the judges for a seat
and some water to be given to his friend. The request was granted, and
the examination continued.
The witness was on the point of being dismissed when the sheriff
re-entered, and, making his way to the bench, handed a book to Justice
Hide. At the same instant Sim's attention seemed to be arrested to the
most feverish alertness. Jumping up from the seat on which Ralph had
placed him, he cried out in a thin shrill voice, calling on the
witness to remain. There was breathless silence in the court.
“You say that your brother,” cried Sim,--“God in heaven, what a
monster he was!--you say that he left his wife and family. Tell us,
did he ever go back to them?”
“No.”
“Did you ever hear of money that your brother's wife came into after
he'd deserted her--that was what he did, your lordships, deserted her
and her poor babby--did you ever hear of it?”
“What if I did?” replied the witness, who was apparently too much
taken by surprise to fabricate a politic falsehood.
“Did you know that the waistrel tried to get hands on the money for
himself?”
Sim was screaming out his questions, the sweat standing in round drops
on his brow. The judges seemed too much amazed to remonstrate.
“Tell us, quick. Did he try to get hands on it?”
“Perhaps; what then?”
“And did he get it?”
“No.”
“And why not--why not?”
The anger of the witness threw him off his guard.
“Because a cursed scoundrel stepped in and threatened to hang him if
he touched the woman's money.”
“Aye, aye! and who was that cursed scoundrel?”
No answer.
“Who, quick, who?”
“That man there!” pointing to Ralph.
Loud murmurs came from the people in the court. In the midst of them a
woman was creating a commotion. She insisted on going out. She cried
aloud that she would faint. It was Mrs. Garth again. The sheriff
leaned over the table to ask if these questions concerned the inquiry,
but Sim gave no time for protest. He never paused to think if his
inquiries had any bearing on the issue.
“And now tell the court your name.”
“I have told it.”
“Your _true_ name, and your brother's.”
Justice Hide looked steadily at the witness. He held an open book in
his hand.
“Your _true_ name,” he said, repeating Sim's inquiry.
“Mark Garth!” mumbled the witness. The judge appeared to expect that
reply.
“And your brother's?”
“Wilson Garth.”
“Remove the perjurer in charge.”
Sim sank back exhausted, and looked about him as one who had been
newly awakened from a dream.
The feeling among the spectators, as also among the jurors, wavered
between sympathy for the accused and certainty of the truth of the
accusation, when the sheriff was seen to step uneasily forward and
hand a paper to counsel. Glancing hastily at the document, the lawyer
rose with a smile of secure triumph and said that, circumstantial as
the evidence on all essential points had hitherto been, he was now in
a position to render it conclusive.
Then handing the paper to Ralph, he asked him to say if he had ever
seen it before. Ralph was overcome; gasping as if for breath, he
raised one hand involuntarily to his breast.
“Tell the court how you came by the instrument in your hand.”
There was no reply. Ralph had turned to Sim, and was looking into his
face with what appeared to be equal pity and contrition.
The paper was worn, and had clearly been much and long folded. It was
charred at one corner as if at some moment it had narrowly escaped the
flames.
“My lords,” said counsel, “this is the very warrant which the deceased
Wilson carried from Carlisle for the arrest of the prisoner who now
holds it; this is the very warrant which has been missing since the
night of the murder of Wilson; and where, think you, my lords, it was
found? It was found--you have heard how foolish be the wise--look now
how childishly a cunning man can sometimes act, how blundering are
clever rogues!--it was found this morning on the defendant Ray's
person while he slept, in an inner breast pocket, which was stitched
up, and seemed to have been rarely used.”
“That is direct proof,” said Justice Millet, with a glance at his
brother on the bench. “After this there can be no doubt in any mind.”
“Peradventure the prisoner can explain how he came by the document,”
said Justice Hide.
“Have you anything to say as to how you became possessed of it?”
“Nothing.”
“Will you offer the court no explanation?”
“None.”
“Would the answer criminate you?”
No reply.
For Ralph the anguish of years was concentrated in that moment. He
might say where he was on the night of the murder, but then he had Sim
only for witness. He thought of Robbie Anderson--why was he not here?
But no, Robbie was better away; he could only clear him of this guilt
by involving his father. And what evidence would avail against the
tangible witness of the warrant? He had preserved that document with
some vague hope of serving Sim, but here it was the serpent in the
breast of both.
“This old man,” he said,--his altered tone startled the
listeners,--“this old man,” he said, pointing to Sim at his side, “is
as innocent of the crime as the purest soul that stands before the
White Throne.”
“And what of yourself?”
“As for me, as for me,” he added, struggling with the emotion that
surged in his voice, “in the sight of Him that searcheth all hearts I
have acquittal. I have sought it long and with tears of Him before
whom we are all as chaff.”
“Away with him, the blasphemer!” cried Justice Millet. “Know where you
are, sir. This is an assembly of Christians. Dare you call God to
acquit you of your barbarous crimes?”
The people in the court took up the judge's word and broke out into a
tempest of irrepressible groans. They were the very people who had
cheered a week ago.
Sim cowered in a corner of the box, with his lank fingers in his long
hair.
Ralph looked calmly on. He was not to be shaken now. There was one way
in which he could quell that clamor and turn it into a tumult of
applause, but that way should not be taken. He could extricate himself
by criminating his dead father, but that he should never do. And had
he not come to die? Was not this the atonement he had meant to make?
It was right, it was right, and it was best. But what of Sim; must he
be the cause of Sim's death also? “This poor old man,” he repeated,
when the popular clamor had subsided, “he is innocent.”
Sim would have risen, but Ralph guessed his purpose and kept him to
his seat. At the same moment Willy Ray among the people was seen
struggling towards the witness-bar. Ralph guessed his purpose and
checked him, too, with a look. Willy stood as one petrified. He saw
only one of two men for the murderer--Ralph or his father.
“Let us go together,” whispered Sim; and in another moment the judge
(Justice Millet) was summing up. He was brief; the evidence of the
woman Rushton and of the recovered warrant proved everything. The case
was as clear as noonday. The jurors need not leave the box.
Without retiring, the jury found a verdict of guilty against both
prisoners.
The crier made proclamation of silence, and the awful sentence of
death was pronounced.
It was remarked that Justice Hide muttered something about a “writ of
error,” and that when he rose from the bench he motioned the sheriff
to follow him.