ain't a man here that 'uld dare to try and cross it when the sea's
breakin' on it. The man that says he would, lies!" And he looked at
the foreman, and waited a moment.
"When my wife took sick, and I stopped goin' to sea, two year ago, and
took up boat-fishin', I didn't know half as much about the coast as
the young boys do, and one afternoon it was blowin' a gale, and we
was all hands comin' in, and passin' along the Bar to go sheer 'round
it to the west'ard, and Captain Fred Cook--he's short-sighted--got on
to the Bar before he knew it, and then he had to go ahead, whether or
no; and I was right after him, and I s'posed he knew, and I followed
him. Well, he was floated over, as luck was, all right; but when I'd
just got on the Bar, a roller dropped back and let my bowsprit down
into the sand, and then come up quicker'n lightnin' and shouldered the
boat over, t'other end first, and slung me into the water; and when I
come up, I see somethin' black, and there was John Wood's boat runnin'
by me before the wind with a rush--and 'fore I knew an'thing he had me
by the hair by one hand and in his boat, and we was over the Bar. Now,
I tell you, a man that looks the way I saw him look when I come over
the gunwale, face up, don't go 'round breakin' in and hookin' things.
He hadn't one chance in five, and he was a married man, too, with
small children. And what's more," he added, incautiously, "he didn't
stop there. When he found out, this last spring, that I was goin' to
lose my place, he lent me money enough to pay the interest that was
overdue on the mortgage, of his own acord."
And he stopped suddenly.
"You have certainly explained yourself," said the foreman. "I think we
understand you distinctly."
"There isn't one word of truth in that idea," said Eli, flushing up,
"and you know it. I've paid him back every cent. I know him better'n
any of you, that's all, and when I know he ain't guilty, I won't say
he is; and I can set here as long as any other man."
"Lively times some folks'll hev, when they go home," said a spare
tin-peddler, stroking his long yellow goatee. "Go into the store:
nobody speak to you; go to cattle-show: everybody follow you 'round;
go to the wharf: nobody weigh your fish; go to buy seed-cakes at the
cart: baker won't give no tick."
"How much does it cost, Mr. Foreman," said the butcher, "for a man
't's obliged to leave town, to move a family out West? I only ask for
information. I have known a case where a man had to leave--couldn't
live there no longer--wa'n't wanted."
There was a knock. An officer, sent by the judge, inquired whether the
jury were likely soon to agree.
"It rests with you, sir," said the foreman, looking at Eli.
But Eli sat doggedly with his hands in his pockets, and did not look
up or speak.
"Say to the judge that I cannot tell," said the foreman.
It was eight o'clock when the officer returned, with orders to take
the jury across the street to the hotel, to supper. They went out in
pairs, except that the juryman who was left to fall in with Eli made
three with the file ahead, and left Eli to walk alone. This was
noticed by the by standers. At the hotel, Eli could not eat a
mouthful. He was seated at one end of the table, and was left entirely
out of the conversation. When the jury were escorted back to the court
house, rumors had evidently begun to arise from his having walked
alone, for there was quite a little crowd at the hotel-door, to see
them. They went as before: four pairs, a file of three, and Eli alone.
Then the spectators understood it.
* * * * *
When the jury were locked into their room again for the night, Mr.
Eldridge sat down by Eli, and lit his pipe.
"I understand," he said, "just how you feel. Now, between you and me,
there was a good-hearted fellow that kept me out of a bad mess once.
I've never told anybody just what it was, and I don't mean to tell you
now, but it brought my blood up standing, to find how near I'd come to
putting a fine steamer and two hundred and forty passengers under
water. Well, one day, a year or so after that, this man had a chance
to get a good ship, only there was some talk against him, that he
drank a little. Well, the owners told him they wanted to see me, and
he come to me, and says he, 'Mr. Eldridge, I hope you'll speak a good
word for me; if you do, I'll get the ship, but if they refuse me this
one, I'm dished everywhere.' Well, the owners put me the square
question, and I had to tell 'em. Well, I met him that afternoon on
Sacramento Street, as white as a sheet, and he wouldn't speak to me,
but passed right by, and that night he went and shipped before the
mast. That's the last I ever heard of him. But I had to do it.
"Now," he added, "this man's been good to you; but the case is proved,
and you ought to vote with the rest of us."
"It ain't proved," said Eli. "The judge said that if any man had a
reasonable doubt, he ought to hold out. Now, I ain't convinced."
"Well, that's easy said," replied Mr. Eldridge, a little hotly, and he
arose, and left him.
The jurymen broke up into little knots, tilted their chairs back,
and settled into the easiest positions that their cramped quarters
allowed. Most of them lit their pipes; the captain, and one or two
whom he honored, smoked fragrant cigars, and the room was soon filled
with a dense cloud.
Eli sat alone by the window.
"Sometimes sell two at one house," said a lank book-agent, arousing
himself from a reverie; "once sold three."
"I think the Early Rose is about as profitable as any," said a little
farmer, with a large circular beard. "I used to favor Jacobs's
Seedling, but they haven't done so well with me of late years."
"Sometimes," said the book-agent, picking his teeth with a quill,
"you'll go to a house, and they'll say they can't be induced to buy a
book of any kind, historical, fictitious, or religious; but you just
keep on talking, and show the pictures--'Grant in Boyhood,' 'Grant a
Tanner,' 'Grant at Head-quarters,' 'Grant in the White House,' 'Grant
before Queen Victoria,' and they warm up, I tell you, and not
infrequently buy."
"Do you sell de 'Illustrated Bible,'" asked Washington, "wid de
Hypocrypha?"
"No; I have a more popular treatise--the 'Illustrated History of the
Bible.' Greater variety. Brings in the surrounding nations, in
costume. Cloth, three dollars; sheep, three-fifty; half calf,
five-seventy-five, full morocco, gilt edges, seven-fifty. Six hundred
and seven illustrations on wood and steel. Three different engravings
of Abraham alone. Four of Noah--'Noah before the Flood,' 'Noah
Building the Ark,' 'Noah Welcoming the Dove,' 'Noah on Ararat.' Steel
engraving of Ezekiel's Wheel, explaining prophecy. Jonah under the
gourd, Nineveh in the distance."
Mr. Eldridge and Captain Thomas had drifted into a discussion of
harbors, and the captain had drawn his chair up to the table, and,
with a cigar in his mouth, was explaining an ingeniously constructed
foreign harbor. He was making a rough sketch, with a pen.
"Here is north," he said; "here is the coast-line; here are the flats;
here are the sluice-gates; they store the water here, in----"
Some of the younger men had their heads together, in a corner, about
the tin-peddler, who was telling stories of people he had met in his
journeys, which brought out repeated bursts of laughter.
In the corner farthest from Eli, a delicate-looking man began to tell
the butcher about Eli's wife.
"Twelve years ago this fall," he said, "I taught district-school in
the parish where she lived. She was about fourteen then. Her father
was a poor farmer, without any faculty. Her mother was dead, and she
kept house. I stayed there one week, boarding 'round."
"Prob'ly didn't git not much of any fresh meat that week," suggested
the butcher.
"She never said much, but it used to divert me to see her order around
her big brothers, just as if she was their mother. She and I got to be
great friends; but she was a queer piece. One day at school, the girls
in her row were communicating, and annoying me, while the third class
was reciting in 'First Steps in Numbers,' and I was so incensed that I
called Lizzie--that's her name--right out, and had her stand up for
twenty minutes. She was a shy little thing, and set great store by
perfect marks. I saw that she was troubled a good deal, to have all of
them looking and laughing at her. But she stood there, with her hands
folded behind her, and not a smile or a word."
"Look out for a sullen cow," said the butcher.
"I felt afraid I had been too hasty with her, and I was rather sorry I
had been so decided--although, to be sure, she didn't pretend to deny
that she had been communicating."
"Of course," said the butcher: "no use lyin' when you're caught in the
act."
"Well, after school, she stayed at her desk, fixing her dinner-pail,
and putting her books in a strap, and all that, till all the rest had
gone, and then she came up to my desk, where I was correcting
compositions."
"Now for music!" said the butcher.
"She had been crying a little. Well, she looked straight in my face,
and said she, 'Mr. Pollard, I just wanted to say to you that I wasn't
doing anything at all when you called me up;' and off she went. Now,
that was just like her--too proud to say a word before the school."
But here his listener's attention was diverted by the voice of the
book-agent:
"The very best Bible for teachers, of course, is the limp-cover,
protected edges, full Levant morocco, Oxford, silk-sewed, kid-lined,
Bishop's Divinity Circuit, with concordance, maps of the Holy Land,
weights, measures, and money-tables of the Jews. Nothing like having a
really----"
"And so," said the captain, moving back his chair, "they let on the
whole head of water, and scour out the channel to a T."
And then he rapped upon the table.
"Gentlemen," he said, "please draw your chairs up, and let us take
another ballot."
The count resulted as before. The foreman muttered something which had
a scriptural sound.
In a few moments, he drew Mr. Eldridge and two others aside.
"Gentlemen," he said to them, "I shall quietly divide the jury into
watches, under your charge: ten can sleep, while one wakes to keep Mr.
Smith discussing the question. I don't propose to have the night
wasted."
And, by one man or another, Eli was kept awake.
* * * * *
"I don't see," said the book-agent, "why you should feel obliged to
stick it out any longer. Of course, you are under obligations. But
you've done more than enough already, so as that he can't complain of
you, and if you give in now, everybody'll give you credit for trying
to save your friend, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, for
giving in to the evidence. So you'll get credit both ways."
An hour later, the tin-peddler came on duty. He had not followed
closely the story about John Wood's loan, and had got it a little
awry.
"Now, how foolish you be," he said, in a confidential tone. "Can't
you see that if you cave in now, after stan'in' out nine hours"--and
he looked at a silver watch with a brass chain, and stroked his
goatee--"nine hours and twenty-seven minutes--that you've made jest
rumpus enough so as't he won't dare to foreclose on you, for fear
they'll say you went back on a trade. On t'other hand, if you hold
clear out, he'll turn you out-o'-doors to-morrow, for a blind, so 's
to look as if there wa'n't no trade between you. Once he gits off, he
won't know Joseph, you bet! That's what I'd do," he added, with a sly
laugh. "Take your uncle's advice."
"The only trouble with that," said Eli, shortly, "is that I don't owe
him anything."
"Oh," said the peddler; "that makes a difference. I understood you
did."
Three o'clock came, and brought Mr. Eldridge. He found Eli worn out
with excitement.
"Now I don't judge you the way the others do," said Mr. Eldridge, in a
low tone, with his hand on Eli's knee. "I know, as I told you, just
the way you feel. But we can't help such things. Suppose, now, that
I had kept dark, and allowed to the owners that that man was always
sober, and I had heard, six months after, of thirty or forty men going
to the bottom because the captain was a little off his base; and then
to think of their wives and children at home. We have to do some hard
things; but I say, do the square thing, and let her slide."
"But I can't believe he's guilty," said Eli.
"But don't you allow," said Mr. Eldridge, "that eleven men are more
sure to hit it right than one man?"
"Yes," said Eli, reluctantly, "as a general thing."
"Well, there's always got to be some give to a jury, just as in
everything else, and you ought to lay right down on the rest of us. It
isn't as if we were at all squirmish. Now, you know that if you hold
out, he'll be tried again."
"Yes, I suppose so."
"Got to be--no other way," said Mr Eldridge. "Now, the next time,
there won't be anybody like you to stand out, and the judge'll know
of this scrape, and he'll just sock it to him."
Eli turned uneasily in his chair.
"And then it won't be understood in your place, and folks'll turn
against you every way, and, what's worse, let you alone."
"I can stand it," said Eli, angrily. "Let 'em do as they like. They
can't kill me."
"They can kill your wife and break down your children," said Mr.
Eldridge. "Women and children can't stand it. Now there's that man
they were speaking of; he lived down my way. He sued a poor, shiftless
fellow that had come from Pennsylvania to his daughter's funeral, and
had him arrested and taken off, crying, just before the funeral
begun--after they'd even set the flowers on the coffin; and nobody'd
speak to him after that--they just let him alone; and after a while
his wife took sick of it--she was a nice, kindly woman--and she had
sort of hysterics, and, finally, he moved off West. And 'twasn't long
before the woman died. Now, you can't undertake to do different from
everybody else."
"Well," said Eli; "I know I wish it was done with."
Mr. Eldridge stretched his arms and yawned. Then he began to walk up
and down, and hum, out of tune. Then he stopped at Captain Thomas's
chair.
"Suppose we try a ballot," he said. "He seems to give a little."
In a moment the foreman rapped.
"It is time we were taking another ballot, gentlemen," he said.
The sleepers rose, grumbling, from uneasy dreams.
"I will write 'guilty' on twelve ballots," said the foreman, "and if
any one desires to write in 'not,' of course he can."
When the hat came to Eli, he took one of the ballots and held it in
his hand a moment; and then he laid it on the table. There was a
general murmur. The picture which Mr. Eldridge had drawn loomed up
before him. But with a hasty hand he wrote in "not," dropped in the
ballot, and going back to his chair by the window, sat down.
There was a cold wave of silence.
Then Eli suddenly walked up to the foreman and faced him.
"Now," he said, "we'll stop. The very next turn breaks ground. If you,
or any other man that you set on, tries to talk to me when I don't
want to hear, to worry me to death--look out!"
How the long hours wore on! How easy, sometimes, to resist an open
pressure, and how hard, with the resistance gone, to fight, as one
that beats the air! How the prospect of a whole hostile town loomed
up, in a mirage, before Eli! And then the picture rose before him of a
long, stately bark, now building, whose owner had asked him yesterday
to be first mate. And if his wife were only well, and he were only
free from this night's trouble, how soon, upon the long, green waves,
he could begin to redeem his little home!
And then came Mr. Eldridge, kind and friendly, to have another little
chat.
* * * * *
Morning came, cold and drizzly. An officer knocked at the door, and
called out, "Breakfast." And, in a moment, unwashed, and all uncombed,
except the tin-peddler, who always carried a beard-comb in his pocket,
they were marched across the street to the hotel.
There were a number of men on the piazza waiting to see them--jurymen,
witnesses, and the accused himself, for he was on bail. He had seen
the procession the night before, and, like the others, had read its
meaning.
"Eli knows I wouldn't do it," he had said to himself, "and he's going
to hang out, sure."
The jury began to turn from the court-house door. Everybody looked. A
file of two men, another file, another, another; would there come
three men, and then one? No; Eli no longer walked alone.
Everybody looked at Wood; he turned sharply away.
But this time the order of march in fact showed nothing, one way or
the other. It only meant that the judge, who had happened to see the
jury the night before returning from their supper, had sent for the
high sheriff in some temper--for judges are human--and had vigorously
intimated that if that statesman did not look after his fool of a
deputy, who let a jury parade secrets to the public view, he
would----!
* * * * *
The jury were in their room again. At nine o'clock came a rap, and a
summons from the court.
The prosecuting attorney was speaking with the judge when they went
in. In a moment he took his seat.
"John Wood!" called out the clerk, and the defendant arose. His
attorney was not there.
"Mr. Foreman!" said the judge, rising. The jury arose. The silence of
the crowded court-room was intense.
"Before the clerk asks you for a verdict, gentlemen," said the judge,
"I have something of the first importance to say to you, which has but
this moment come to my knowledge."
Eli changed color, and the whole court-room looked at him.
"There were some most singular rumors, after the case was given to
you, gentlemen, to the effect that there had been in this cause a
criminal abuse of justice. It is painful to suspect, and shocking to
know, that courts and juries are liable ever to suffer by such
unprincipled practices. After ten years upon the bench, I never
witness a conviction of crime without pain; but that pain is light,
compared with the distress of knowing of a wilful perversion of
justice. It is a relief to me to be able to say to you that such
instances are, in my judgment, exceedingly rare, and--so keen is the
awful searching power of truth--are almost invariably discovered."
The foreman touched his neighbor with his elbow. Eli folded his arms.
"As I said," continued the judge, "there were most singular rumors.
During the evening and the night, rumor, as is often the case, led to
evidence, and evidence has led to confession and to certainty. And the
district attorney now desires me to say to you that the chief officer
of the bank--who held the second key to the safe--is now under arrest
for a heavy defalcation, which a sham robbery was to conceal, and that
you may find the prisoner at the bar--not guilty. I congratulate you,
gentlemen, that you had not rendered an adverse verdict."
"Your Honor!" said Eli; and he cleared his throat; "I desire it to be
known that, even as the case stood last night, this jury had not
agreed to convict, and never would have!"
There was a hush, while a loud scratching pen indorsed the record of
acquittal. Then Wood walked down to the jury-box and took Eli's hand.
"Just what I told my wife all through," he said. "I knew you'd hang
out!"
* * * * *
Eli's jury was excused for the rest of the day, and by noon he was in
his own village, relieved, too, of his most pressing burden: for
George Cahoon had met him on the road, and told him that he was not
going to the West, after all, for the present, and should not need his
money. But, as he turned the bend of the road and neared his house, he
felt a rising fear that some disturbing rumor might have reached his
wife about his action on the jury. And, to his distress and amazement,
there she was, sitting in a chair at the door.
"Lizzie!" he said, "what does this mean? Are you crazy?"
"I'll tell you what it means," she said, as she stood up with a little
smile and clasped her hands behind her. "This morning, it got around
and came to me that you was standing out all alone for John Wood, and
that the talk was that they'd be down on you, and drive you out of
town, and that everybody pitied _me--pitied me_! And when I heard
that, I thought I'd see! And my strength seemed to come all back, and
I got right up, and dressed myself. And what's more, I'm going to get
well now!"
And she did.
YOUNG STRONG OF "THE CLARION."
BY MILICENT WASHBURN SHINN.
_Overland Monthly, September, 1884._
If you had asked any resident of Green's Ferry some eight years
ago--say, in '76--who were the leading men of his town, he would
doubtless have begun:
"Well, there's Judge Garvey, of course. Then there's Uncle Billy
Green, who built the first shanty there in '49, and young Strong of
'The Clarion'--"
However he might continue his enumeration, it would certainly
have been as above for the first three names. One you would have
recognized, if you had been following State politics closely for some
years; for Judge Garvey was very regularly chosen State senator in his
district, and had held the barren honor of presidential elector the
last time his party carried the State. In '76, some of the papers were
urging his nomination for Congress, and politicians thought his
chance of such a nomination increasing. It has not turned out so; his
name has quite dropped out of the papers, and it is said he does not
certainly control his own county now; but at that time he was the most
potent political influence in three counties. What he influenced them
to, I never clearly understood, for I cannot recall that I ever heard
his name mentioned in connection with any measure or opinion.
A file of "The Clarion" during the four years that young Strong was
editor would doubtless throw light on the matter. "The Clarion" was at
this time a sort of voice crying in the wilderness about Reform, which
was a very new idea, indeed, to its readers. Garvey did not like the
paper, and young Strong disliked Garvey very much; but the two men had
kept on fairly good terms--not so rigid good terms, of course, as to
forbid their expressing to third parties the frankest contempt for
each other. The Judge had here the advantage, for Strong despised him
indignantly, as a knave, while he despised Strong--or said he
did--pityingly, as a fool. He must, however, have at bottom honored
the young fellow with some serious antipathy; for it was after all no
laughing matter that a boy of twenty-five should come into "his Gaul,
which he had conquered by arms," and filch away his home paper from
under his very eyes. Moreover, though people read the editorials,
laughed, and voted with the Judge just the same--they still did read
them. However, Judge Garvey certainly was more civil to Strong than
Strong was to him.
As for Uncle Billy Green, his rank was due not only to his connection
with the "first shanty" (a house of entertainment at the point where
a trail turned from the river toward the mines), but to his having
remained steadily on the spot ever since, putting up a larger
building at intervals as the settlement gathered around him, until
now he was proprietor of the American Eagle Hotel, a house of goodly
dimensions and generous equipment--billiard-room, bowling alley,
shooting-gallery. Nor did Uncle Billy Green own and conduct this house
in a purely business spirit; a more modest one would have been more
profitable; he liked to "do that much for the town." A man by the name
of Gulliver had established the old rope-ferry, before the day of
bridges, but it was naturally called Green's Ferry, being a ferry at
Green's place. He had been of an undoubted valor in the Indian fights
of early days, was full of reminiscences, had no personal objections
to anybody or anything, and had long given over to Judge Garvey the
trouble of forming his opinions.
Judge Garvey and young Strong were pretty sure to be put upon such
boards or committees as the local affairs of the small town demanded;
and in local matters they proved to pull together fairly well, however
at odds they were politically. But in the end it was not over
politics, but over the district school, that they fell out squarely.
They were both trustees, and as Green was the third, the board seemed
in little danger from any too radical reforming tendencies young
Strong might be guilty of, and the Judge had no thought of danger as
he walked down to "The Clarion" office, a breathless September
afternoon, a couple of days before the school should open.