wife to herself, as she looked at him fondly, "and I guess they think
there won't be much doubt about what he says."
"Well, Captain," said Wood, jocosely, breaking a spear of grass to
bits in his fingers, "I didn't know but you'd come to arrest me."
The captain calmly smiled as only a man can smile who has been
accosted with the same humorous remark a dozen times a day for twenty
years. He folded his paper carefully, put it in his pocket, took off
his spectacles and put them in their silver case, took a red silk
handkerchief from his hat, wiped his face, and put the handkerchief
back. Then he said, shortly:
"That's what I _have_ come for."
Wood, still leaning on the fence, looked at him, and said nothing.
"That's just what I've come for," said Captain Nourse. "I've got to
arrest you; here's the warrant." And he handed it to him.
"What does this mean?" said Wood. "I can't make head nor tail of
this."
"Well," said the captain, "the long and short is: these high-toned
detectives that they've had down from town, seein' as our own force
wasn't good enough, allow that the safe was unlocked with a key, in
due form, and then the lock was broke afterward, to look as if it had
been forced open. They've had the foreman of the safe-men down, too,
and he says the same thing. Naturally, the argument is: there were
only two keys in existence; one was safe with the president of the
bank, and is about all he's got to show out of forty years' savings;
the only other one you had: consequently it heaves it on to you."
"I see," said Wood. "I will go with you. Do you want to come into the
house with me while I get my coat?"
"Well, I suppose I must keep you in sight--now, you know."
And they went into the house.
"Mary," said her husband, "the folks that lost by Clark when the bank
broke have been at him until he's felt obliged to pitch on somebody,
and he's pitched on me; and Captain Nourse has come to arrest me. I
shall get bail before long."
She said nothing, and did not shed a tear till he was gone.
But then----
II.
Wide wastes of salt marsh to the right, imprisoning the upland
with a vain promise of infinite liberty, and, between low, distant
sand-hills, a rim of sea. Stretches of pine woods behind, shutting in
from the great outer world, and soon to darken into evening gloom.
Ploughed fields and elm-dotted pastures to the left, and birch-lined
roads leading by white farm-houses to the village, all speaking
of cheer and freedom to the prosperous and the happy, but to the
unfortunate and the indebted, of meshes invisible but strong as steel.
But, before, no lonesome marshes, no desolate forest, no farm or
village street, but the free blue ocean, rolling and tumbling still
from the force of an expended gale.
In the open door-way of a little cottage, warmed by the soft slanting
rays of the September sun, a rough man, burnt and freckled, was
sitting, at his feet a net, engaged upon some handiwork which two
little girls were watching. Close by him lay a setter, his nose
between his paws. Occasionally the man raised his eyes to scan the
sea.
"There's Joel," he said, "comin' in around the Bar. Not much air
stirrin' now!"
Then he turned to his work again.
"First, you go _so_ fash'," he said to the children, as he drew a
thread; "then you go _so_ fash'."
And as he worked he made a great show of labor, much to their
diversion.
But the sight of Joel's broad white sail had not brought pleasant
thoughts to his mind. For Joel had hailed him, off the Shoal, the
afternoon before, and had obligingly offered to buy his fish, right
there, and so let him go directly home, omitting to mention that
sudden jump of price due to an empty market.
"Wonder what poor man he's took a dollar out of to-day! Well, I s'pose
it's all right: those that's got money, want money."
"What be you, Eli--ganging on hooks?" said Aunt Patience, as she
tip-toed into the kitchen behind him, from his wife's sick-room, and
softly closed the door after her.
"No," said the elder of the children; "he's mending our stockings, and
showing me how."
"Well, you do have a hard time, don't you?" said Aunt Patience,
looking down over his shoulder; "to slave and tug and scrape to get a
house over your head, and then to have to turn square 'round, and stay
to home with a sick woman, and eat all into it with mortgages!"
"Oh, well," he said, "we'll fetch, somehow."
Aunt Patience went to the glass, and holding a black pin in her mouth,
carefully tied the strings of her sun-bonnet.
"Anyway," she says, "you take it good-natured. Though if there is one
thing that's harder than another, it is to be good-natured all the
time, without being aggravating. I have known men that was so awfully
good-natured that they was harder to live with than if they was
cross!"
And without specifying further, she opened her plaid parasol, and
stepped out at the porch.
* * * * *
Though, on this quiet afternoon of Saturday, the peace of the
approaching Sabbath seemed already brooding over the little dwelling,
peace had not lent her hand to the building of the home. Every foot of
land, every shingle, every nail, had been wrung from the reluctant
sea. Every voyage had contributed something. It was a great day when
Eli was able to buy the land. Then, between two voyages, he dug a
cellar and laid a foundation; then he saved enough to build the main
part of the cottage and to finish the front room, lending his own hand
to the work. Then he used to get letters at every port, telling of
progress--how Lizzie, his wife, had adorned the front room with a
bright nine-penny paper, of which a little piece was inclosed, which
he kept as a sort of charm about him and exhibited to his friends; how
she and her little brother had lathed the entry and the kitchen, and
how they had set out blackberry vines from the woods. Then another
letter told of a surprise awaiting him on his return; and, in due
time, coming home as third mate from Hong Kong to a seaman's
tumultuous welcome, he had found that a great, good-natured mason,
with whose sick child his wife had watched, night after night, had
appeared one day with lime and hair and sand, and in white raiment,
and had plastered the entry and the kitchen, and finished a room
upstairs.
And so, for years, at home and on the sea, at New York, and at
Valparaiso, and in the Straits of Malacca, the little house and the
little family within it had grown into the fibre of Eli's heart.
Nothing had given him more delight than to meet, in the strange
streets of Calcutta or before the Mosque of Omar, some practical
Yankee from Stonington or Machias, and, whittling, to discuss with
him, among the turbans of the Orient, the comparative value of shaved
and of sawed shingles, or the economy of "Swedes-iron" nails, and to
go over with him the estimates and plans which he had worked out in
his head under all the constellations of the skies.
* * * * *
The supper things were cleared away. The children had said good-night
and gone to bed, and Eli had been sitting for an hour by his wife's
bedside. He had had to tax his patience and ingenuity heavily during
the long months that she had lain there to entertain her for a little
while in the evening, after his hard, wet day's work. He had been
talking now of the coming week, when he was to serve upon the jury in
the adjoining county-town.
"I cal'late I can come home about every night," he said, "and it'll be
quite a change, at any rate."
"But you don't seem so cheerful about it as I counted you would be,"
said his wife. "Are you afraid you'll have to be on the bank-case?"
"Not much!" he answered. "No trouble 'n that case! Jury won't leave
their seats. These city fellers'll find they've bit off more'n they
can chew when they try to figure out John Wood done that. I only hope
I'll have the luck to be on that case--all hands on the jury whisper
together a minute, and then clear him, right on the spot, and then
shake hands with him all 'round!"
"But something is worrying you," she said. "What is it? You have
looked it since noon."
"Oh, nothin'," he replied--"only George Cahoon came up to-noon to say
that he was goin' West next week, and that he would have to have that
money he let me have a while ago. And where to get it--I don't know."
III.
The court-room was packed. John Wood's trial was drawing to its close.
Eli was on the jury. Some one had advised the prosecuting attorney, in
a whisper, to challenge him, but he had shaken his head and said:
"Oh, I couldn't afford to challenge him for that; it would only leak
out, and set the jury against me. I'll risk his standing out against
this evidence."
The trial had been short. It had been shown how the little building
of the bank had been entered. Skilled locksmiths from the city had
testified that the safe was opened with a key, and that the lock was
broken afterward, from the inside--plainly to raise the theory of a
forcible entry by strangers.
It had been proved that the only key in existence, not counting that
kept by the president, was in the possession of Wood, who was filling,
for a few days, the place of the cashier--the president's brother--in
his absence. It had been shown that Wood was met, at one o'clock of
the night in question, crossing the fields toward his home, from the
direction of the bank, with a large wicker basket slung over his
shoulders, returning, as he had said, from eel-spearing in Harlow's
Creek; and there was other circumstantial evidence.
Mr. Clark, the president of the bank, had won the sympathy of every
one by the modest way in which, with eye-glasses in hand, he had
testified to the particulars of the loss which had left him penniless,
and had ruined others whose little all was in his hands. And then, in
reply to the formal question, he had testified, amid roars of laughter
from the court-room, that it was not he who robbed the safe. At this,
even the judge and Wood's lawyer had not restrained a smile.
This had left the guilt with Wood. His lawyer, an inexperienced young
attorney--who had done more or less business for the bank, and would
hardly have ventured to defend this case but that the president had
kindly expressed his entire willingness that he should do so--had, of
course, not thought it worthwhile to cross-examine Mr. Clark, and had
directed his whole argument against the theory that the safe had been
opened with a key, and not by strangers. But he had felt all through
that, as a man politely remarked to him when he finished, he was only
butting his "head ag'in a stone wall."
And while he was arguing, a jolly-looking old lawyer had written, in
the fly-leaf of a law-book on his knee, and passed with a wink to a
young man near him who had that very morning been admitted to the bar,
these lines:
"When callow Blackstones soar too high,
Quit common-sense, and reckless fly,
Soon, Icarus-like, they headlong fall,
And down come client, case, and all."
The district-attorney had not thought it worth while to expend much
strength upon his closing argument; but being a jovial stump-speaker,
of a wide reputation within narrow limits, he had not been able to
refrain from making merry over Wood's statement that the basket which
he had been seen bearing home, on the eventful night, was a basket of
eels.
"Fine eels those, gentlemen! We have seen gold-fish and silver-fish,
but golden eels are first discovered by this defendant. The apostle,
in Holy Writ, caught a fish with a coin in its mouth; but this man
leaves the apostle in the dim distance when he finds eels that are
all money. No storied fisherman of Bagdad, catching enchanted princes
disguised as fishes in the sea, ever hooked such a treasure as this
defendant hooked when he hooked that basket of eels! [Rustling
appreciation of the pun among the jury.] If a squirming, twisting,
winding, wriggling eel, gentlemen, can be said at any given moment to
have a back, we may distinguish this new-found species as the
green-back eel. It is a common saying that no man can hold an eel and
remain a Christian. I should like to have viewed the pious equanimity
of this church-member when he laid his hands on that whole bed of
eels. In happy, barefoot boyhood, gentlemen, we used to find
mud-turtles marked with initials or devices cut in their shells; but
what must have been our friend's surprise to find, in the muddy bed of
Harlow's Creek, eels marked with a steel-engraving of the landing of
Columbus, and the signature of the Register of the Treasury! I hear
that a corporation is now being formed by the title of The Harlow's
Creek Greenback National Bank-bill Eel-fishing Company, to follow up,
with seines and spears, our worthy friend's discovery! I learn that
the news of this rich placer has spread to the golden mountains of the
West, and that the exhausted intellects which have been reduced to
such names for their mines as 'The Tombstone,' 'The Red Dog,' the
'Mrs. E. J. Parkhurst,' are likely now to flood us with prospectuses
of the 'Eel Mine,' 'The Flat Eel,' 'The Double Eel,' and then, when
they get ready to burst upon confiding friends, 'The Consolidated
Eels.'"
It takes but little to make a school or a court-room laugh, and the
speech had appeared to give a good deal of amusement to the listeners.
To all?
Did it amuse that man who sat, with folded arms, harsh and rigid, at
the dock? Did it divert that white-faced woman, cowering in a corner,
listening as in a dream?
* * * * *
The judge now charged the jury briefly. It was unnecessary for him, he
said, to recapitulate evidence of so simple a character. The chief
question for the jury was as to the credibility of the witnesses. If
the witnesses for the prosecution were truthful and were not mistaken,
the inference of guilt seemed inevitable; this the defendant's counsel
had conceded. The defendant had proved a good reputation; upon that
point there was only this to be said: that, while such evidence was
entitled to weight, yet, on the other hand, crimes involving a breach
of trust could, from their very nature, be committed only by persons
whose good reputations secured them positions of trust.
* * * * *
The jury-room had evidently not been furnished by a ring. There was a
long table for debate, twelve hard chairs for repose, twelve spittoons
for luxury, and a clock.
The jury sat in silence for a few moments, as old Captain Nourse, who
had them in his keeping, and eyed them as if he was afraid that he
might lose one of them in a crack and be held accountable on his bond,
rattled away at the unruly lock. Looking at them then, you would have
seen faces all of a New England cast but one. There was a tall,
powerful negro called George Washington, a man well known in this
county town, to which he had come, as driftwood from the storm of war,
in '65. Some of the "boys" had heard him, in a great prayer-meeting in
Washington--a city which he always spoke of as his "namesake"--at the
time of the great review, say, in his strong voice, with that pathetic
quaver in it: "Like as de parched an' weary traveller hangs his harp
upon de winder, an' sighs for oysters in de desert, so I longs to res'
my soul an' my foot in Mass'chusetts;" and they were so delighted with
him that they invited him on the spot to go home with them, and took
up a collection to pay his fare, and so he was a public character. As
for his occupation--when the census-taker, with a wink to the boys in
the store, had asked him what it was, he had said, in that same odd
tone: "Putties up glass a little--white-washes a little--" and, when
the man had made a show of writing all that down, "preaches a little."
He might have said "preaches a big," for you could hear him half a
mile away.
The foreman was a retired sea-captain. "Good cap'n--Cap'n Thomas,"
one of his neighbors had said of him. "Allers gits good ships--never
hez to go huntin' 'round for a vessel. But it is astonishin' what
differences they is! Now there's Cap'n A. K. P. Bassett, down to the
West Harbor. You let it git 'round that Cap'n A. K. P. is goin' off on
a Chiny voyage, and you'll see half a dozen old shays to onct, hitched
all along his fence of an arternoon, and wimmen inside the house, to
git Cap'n A. K. P. to take their boys. But you let Cap'n Thomas give
out that he wants boys, and he hez to glean 'em--from the poor-house,
and from step-mothers, and where he can: the wimmen knows! Still," he
added, "Cap'n Thomas's a good cap'n. I've nothin' to say ag'in him.
He's smart!"
* * * * *
"Gentlemen," said the foreman, when the officer, at last, had securely
locked them in, "shall we go through the formality of a ballot? If the
case were a less serious one, we might have rendered a verdict in our
seats."
"What's the use foolin' 'round ballotin'?" said a thick-set butcher.
"Ain't we all o' one mind?"
"It is for you to say, gentlemen," said the foreman. "I shouldn't want
to have it go abroad that we had not acted formally, if there was any
one disposed to cavil."
"Mr. Speaker," said George Washington, rising and standing in the
attitude of Webster, "I rises to appoint to order. We took ballast in
de prior cases, and why make flesh of one man an' a fowl of another?"
"Very well," said the foreman, a trifle sharply. "'The longest way
round is the shortest way home.'"
Twelve slips of paper were handed out, to be indorsed guilty, "for
form." They were collected in a hat and the foreman told them
over--"just for form." "'Guilty,' 'guilty,' 'guilty,' 'guilty';--wait
a minute," he said, "here is a mistake. Here is one 'not
guilty'--whose is this?"
There was a pause.
"Whose is it?" said the foreman, sharply.
Eli turned a little red.
"It's mine," he said.
"Do you mean it?" said the foreman.
"Of course I mean it," he answered.
"Whew!" whistled the foreman. "Very well, sir; we'll have an
understanding, then. This case is proved to the satisfaction of every
man who heard it, I may safely say, but one. Will that one please
state the grounds of his opinion?"
"I ain't no talker," said Eli, "but I ain't satisfied he's
guilty--that's all."
"Don't you believe the witnesses?"
"Mostly."
"Which one don't you believe?"
"I can't say. I don't believe he's guilty."
"Is there one that you think lied?"
No answer.
"Now it seems to me----" said a third juryman.
"One thing at a time, gentlemen," said the foreman. "Let us wait for
an answer from Mr. Smith. Is there any one that you think lied? We
will wait, gentlemen, for an answer."
There was a long pause. The trial seemed to Eli Smith to have shifted
from the court to this shabby room, and he was now the culprit.
All waited for him; all eyes were fixed upon him.
The clock ticked loud! Eli counted the seconds. He knew the
determination of the foreman.
The silence became intense.
"I want to say my say," said a short man in a pea-jacket--a retired
San Francisco pilot, named Eldridge. "I entertain no doubt the man is
guilty. At the same time, I allow for differences of opinion. I don't
know this man that's voted 'not guilty,' but he seems to be a
well-meaning man. I don't know his reasons; probably he don't
understand the case. I should like to have the foreman tell the
evidence over, so as if he don't see it clear, he can ask questions,
and we can explain."
"I second de motion," said George Washington.
There was a general rustle of approval.
"I move it," said the pilot, encouraged.
"Very well, Mr. Eldridge," said the foreman. "If there is no
objection, I will state the evidence, and if there is any loop-hole, I
will trouble Mr. Smith to suggest it as I go along," and he proceeded
to give a summary of the testimony, with homely force.
"Now, sir?" he said, when he had finished.
"I move for another ballot," said Mr. Eldridge.
The result was the same. Eli had voted "not guilty."
"Mr. Smith," said the foreman, "this must be settled in some way. This
is no child's play. You can't keep eleven men here, trifling with
them, giving no pretence of a reason."
"I haven't any reasons, only that I don't believe he's guilty," said
Eli. "I'm not goin' to vote a man into states-prison, when I don't
believe he done it," and he rose and walked to the window, and looked
out. It was low tide. There was a broad stretch of mud in the
distance, covered with boats lying over disconsolate. A driving storm
had emptied the streets. He beat upon the rain-dashed glass a moment
with his fingers, and then he sat down again.
"Well, sir," said the foreman, "this is singular conduct. What do you
propose to do?"
Silence.
"I suppose you realize that the rest of us are pretty rapidly forming
a conclusion on this matter," said the foreman.
"Come! come!" said Mr. Eldridge; "don't be quite so hard on him,
Captain. Now, Mr. Smith," he said, standing up with his hands in his
coat-pockets, and looking at Eli, "we know that there often is crooked
sticks on juries, that hold out alone--that's to be expected; but they
always argue, and stand to it the rest are fools, and all that. Now,
all is, we don't see why you don't sort of argue, if you've got
reasons satisfactory to you. Come, now," he added, walking up to Eli,
and resting one foot on the seat of his chair, "why don't you tell it
over? and if we're wrong, I'm ready to join you."
Eli looked up at him.
"Didn't you ever know," he said, "of a man's takin' a cat off, to
lose, that his little girl didn't want drownded, and leavin' him
ashore, twenty or thirty miles, bee-line, from home, and that cat's
bein' back again the next day, purrin' 'round 's if nothin' had
happened?"
"Yes," said Mr. Eldridge--"knew of just such a case."
"Very well," said Eli; "how does he find his way home?"
"Don't know," said Mr. Eldridge; "always has been a standing mystery
to me."
"Well," said Eli, "mark my words. There's such a thing as arguin', and
there's such a thing as knowin' outright; and when you'll tell me how
that cat inquires his way home, I'll tell you how I know John Wood
ain't guilty."
This made a certain sensation, and Eli's stock went up.
An old, withered man rapped on the table.
"That's so!" he said; "and there's other sing'lar things! How is it
that a sea-farin' man, that's dyin' to home, will allers die on the
ebb-tide? It never fails, but how does it happen? Tell me that! And
there's more ways than one of knowin' things, too!"
"I know that man ain't guilty," said Eli.
"Hark ye!" said a dark old man with a troubled face, rising and
pointing his finger toward Eli. "_Know_, you say? I _knew_, wunst. I
_knew_ that my girl, my only child, was good. One night she went off
with a married man that worked in my store, and stole my money--and
where is she now?" And then he added, "What I _know_ is, that every
man hes his price. I hev mine, and you hev yourn!"
The impugnment of Eli's motives was evident to all.
"'Xcuse me, Mr. Speaker," said George Washington, rising with his hand
in his bosom; "as de question is befo' us, I wish to say that de las'
bro' mus' have spoken under 'xcitement. Every man _don'_ have his
price! An' I hope de bro' will recant--like as de Psalmist goes out o'
his way to say '_In my haste_ I said, All men are liars.' He was a
very busy man, de Psalmist--writin' down hymns all day, sharpen'n' his
lead-pencil, bossin' 'roun' de choir--callin' Selah! Well, bro'n an'
sisters"--both arms going out, and his voice going up--"one day, seems
like, he was in gre't haste--got to finish a psalm for a monthly
concert, or such--and some man incorrupted him, and lied; and bein' in
gre't haste--and a little old Adam in him--he says, right off, quick:
'_All_ men are liars!' But see--when he gets a little time to set back
and meditate, he says: 'Dis won' do--dere's Moses, an' Job, an'
Paul--dey ain't liars!' An' den he don' sneak out, and 'low he said,
'All men is lions,' or such. No! de Psalmist ain't no such man; but he
owns up, an' 'xplains: '_In my haste_,' he says, 'I said it.'"
The foreman rose and rapped.
"I await a motion," said he, "if our friend will allow me the
privilege of speaking."
Mr. Washington calmly bowed.
Then the foreman, when nobody seemed disposed to move, speaking
slowly, at first, and piece-meal, alternating language with smoke,
gradually edged into the current of the evidence, and ended by going
all over it again, with fresh force and point. His cigar glowed and
chilled in the darkening room as he talked.
"Now," he said, when he had drawn all the threads together to the
point of guilt, "what are we going to do upon this evidence?"
"I'll tell you something," said Eli. "I didn't want to say it because
I know what you'll all think, but I'll tell you, all the same."
"Ah!" said the foreman.
Eli stood up and faced the others.