half an hour, and the trial was ended. It rested with the jury 'to say
whether John North was innocent or guilty. As the jury filed from the
room North realized this with a feeling of relief in that that at last
the miserable ordeal was over. He had never been quite bereft of hope,
the consciousness of his own innocence had measurably sustained him in
his darkest hours. And now once more his imagination swept him beyond
the present into the future; again he could believe that he was to pass
from that room a free man to take his place in the world from which he
had these many weary months been excluded. There was no bitterness in
his heart toward any one, even Moxlow's harsh denunciation of him was
forgotten; the law through its bungling agents had laid its savage hands
on him, that was all, and these agents had merely done what they
conceived to be their duty.
He glanced toward the big clock on the wall above the judge's desk and
saw that thirty minutes had already gone by since the jury retired.
Another half-hour passed while he studied the face of the clock, but the
door of the jury room, near which Deputy-sheriff Brockett had taken up
his station, still remained closed and no sound came from beyond it. At
his back he heard one man whisper to another that the jurymen's dinner
had just been brought in from the hotel.
"That means another three quarters of an hour,--it's their last chance
to get a square meal at the county's expense!" the speaker added, which
earned him a neighboring ripple of laughter.
Judge Langham and Moxlow had withdrawn to the former's private room.
Sheriff Conklin touched North on the shoulder.
"I guess we'd better go back, John!" he said. "If they want us to-night
they can send for us."
Morbid and determined, the spectators settled down to wait for the
verdict. The buzz of conversation was on every hand, and the air grew
thick and heavy with tobacco smoke, while relaxed and at ease the crowd
with its many pairs of eyes kept eager watch on the door before which
Brockett kept guard. No man in the room was wholly unaffected by the
sinister significance of the deputy's presence there, and the fat little
man with his shiny bald head and stubby gray mustache, silent,
preoccupied, taking no part in what was passing about him, became as the
figure of fate.
The clock on the wall back of the judges desk ticked off the seconds;
now it made itself heard in the hush that stole over the room, again its
message was lost in the confusion of sounds, the scraping of feet or the
hum of idle talk. But whether the crowd was silent or noisy the clock
performed its appointed task until its big gilt hands told whoever cared
to look that the jury in the John North case had devoted three hours to
its verdict and its dinner.
The atmosphere of the place had become more and more oppressive. Men
nodded sleepily in their chairs, conversation had almost ceased, when
suddenly and without any apparent reason Brockett swung about on his
heel and faced the locked door. His whole expression betokened a
feverish interest. The effect of this was immediate. A wave of
suppressed excitement passed over the crowd; absolute silence followed;
and then from beyond the door, and distinctly audible in the stillness,
came the sound of a quick step on the uncarpeted floor. The clock ticked
twice, then a hand dealt the door a measured blow.
The moment of silence that followed this ominous signal was only broken
when a deputy who had been nodding half asleep in his chair, sprang
erect and hurried from the room. As the swinging baize doors banged at
his heels, the crowd seemed to breathe again.
Moxlow was the first to arrive. The deputy had found him munching a
sandwich on the court-house steps. His entrance was unhurried and his
manner quietly confident; he put aside his well-worn overcoat and took
his seat at the counsel table. A little ripple of respectful comment had
greeted his appearance; this died away when the baize doors at the back
of the room swung open again to admit North and the sheriff.
North's face was white, but he wore a look of high courage. He
understood to the full the dreadful hazard of the next few moments. With
never a glance to the right or to the left, he crossed the room and took
his seat; as he settled himself in his chair, Belknap hurried into
court.
Judge Langham had not yet appeared, and the crowd focused its attention
on the shut door leading into his private office. Presently this door
was seen to open slowly, and the judge's spare erect figure paused on
the threshold. His eyes, sunken, yet brilliant with a strange light,
shifted from side to side as he glanced over the room.
Marshall Langham had not quitted his seat. There in his remote corner
under the gallery, his blanched face framed by shadows, his father's
glance found him. With his hand resting tremulously on the jamb of the
door as if to steady himself, the judge advanced a step. Once more his
eyes strayed in the direction of his son, and from the gloom of that
dull corner which Marshall had made his own, despair and terror called
aloud to him. His shaking hand dropped to his side, and then like some
pale ghost, he passed slowly before the eager eyes that were following
his every movement to his place behind the flat-topped desk on the
raised dais.
As he sank into his chair he turned to the clerk of the court and there
was a movement of his thin lips, but no sound passed them. Brockett
guessed the order he had wished to give, and the big key slid around in
the old-fashioned lock of the jury-room door. Heavy-visaged and
hesitating, the twelve men filed into court, and at sight of them John
North's heart seemed to die within his breast. He no longer hoped nor
doubted, he knew their verdict,--he was caught in some intricate web of
circumstance! A monstrous injustice was about to be done him, and in the
very name of justice itself!
The jurors, awkward in their self-consciousness, crossed the room and,
as intangible as it was potent, a wave of horror went with them. There
was a noisy scraping of chairs as they took their seats, and then a
deathlike silence.
The clerk glanced up inquiringly into the white face that was bent on
him. A scarcely perceptible inclination of the head answered him, and he
turned to the jury.
"Gentlemen, have you arrived at a true verdict, and chosen one of your
number to speak for you?" he asked.
Martin Howe, the first man in the front row of the two solemn lines of
jurors, came awkwardly to his feet and said almost in a whisper:
"We have. We find the defendant guilty as charged in the indictment."
"Mr. Howe, do you find this man guilty as charged in the indictment?"
asked the clerk.
"I do," responded the juror.
Twelve times the clerk of the court, calling each man by name, asked
this question, and one by one the jurors stood up and answered:
"I do."
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THE LAST APPEAL
One raw morning late in April, Mark Leanard, who worked at Kirby's
lumber-yard, drove his team of big grade Percherons up to Kirby's office
by the railroad tracks.
"What's doing?" he asked of Kirby's clerk.
The clerk handed him a slip of paper.
"Go round and tell Mitchell to get you out this load!" he said.
Leanard went off whistling, with the order slip tucked back of his
hatband. In the yard, Mitchell the foreman, gave him a load "of
sixteen-foot" pine boards and "two by fours".
"Where to?" the driver asked, as he took his seat on top the load.
"To the jail, they're going to fence the yard."
"You mean young John North?"
"That's what,--did you think you'd get a day off and take the old woman
and the kids?" asked Mitchell.
It was a little past eight when the teamster entered the alley back of
the jail and began to unload. The fall of the first heavy plank took
John North to his cell window. For a long breathless moment he stood
there peering down into the alley, then he turned away.
All that day the teams from Kirby's continued to bring lumber for the
fence, and at intervals North heard the thud of the heavy planks as they
were thrown from the wagons, or the voices of the drivers as they urged
their horses up the steep grade from the street. Darkness came at last
and with it unbroken quiet, but in his troubled slumbers that night the
condemned man saw the teams come and go, and heard the fall of the
planks. It was only when the dawn's first uncertain light stole into the
cell that a dreamless sleep gave him complete forgetfulness.
From this he was presently roused by hearing the sound of voices in the
yard, and then the sharp ringing blows of a hammer. He quitted his bed
and slipped to the window; two carpenters had already begun building the
frame work that was to carry the temporary fence which would inclose the
place of execution. It was _his_ fence; it would surround his gallows
that his death should not become a public spectacle.
As they went about their task, the two carpenters stole covert glances
up in the direction of his window, but North stood well back in the
gloom of his cell and was unseen. Horror could add nothing to the prison
pallor, which had driven every particle of color from his cheeks. Out of
these commonplace details was to come the final tragedy. Those men in
faded overalls were preparing for his death,--a limit had been fixed to
the very hours that he might live. On the morning of the tenth of June
he would see earth and sky from that window for the last time!
Chance passers-by with no very urgent affairs of their own on hand,
drifted up from the street, and soon a little group had assembled in the
alley to watch the two carpenters at their work, or to stare up at
North's strongly barred window. Now and again a man would point out this
window to some new-corner not so well informed as himself.
Whenever North looked down into the alley that morning, there was the
human grouping with its changing personnel. Men sprawled on the piles of
boards, or lounged about the yard, while the murmur of their idle talk
reached him in his cell. The visible excuse which served to bring them
there was commonplace enough, but it was invested with the interest of a
coming tragedy, and North's own thoughts went forward to the time when
the fence should be finished, when somewhere within the space it
inclosed would stand his gallows.
Shortly before the noon whistles blew, two little girls came into the
alley with the carpenters' dinner pails. They made their way timidly
through the crowd, casting shy glances to the right and left; at a word
from one of the men they placed the dinner pails beside the pile of
lumber and hurried away; but at the street corner they paused, and with
wide eyes stared up in the direction of North's window.
A moment later the whistles sounded and the idlers dispersed, while the
two mechanics threw down their hammers and took possession of the lumber
pile. After they had eaten, they lighted their pipes and smoked in
silent contentment; but before their pipes were finished the crowd began
to reassemble, and all that afternoon the shifting changing groups stood
about in the alley, watching the building of the fence. At no time were
the two carpenters without an audience. This continued from day to day
until the structure was completed, then for a week there was no work
done within the inclosure. It remained empty and deserted, with its
litter of chips, of blocks and of board ends.
On the morning of the first Monday in May, North was standing before his
window when the two mechanics entered the yard from the jail; they
brought tools, and one carried a roll of blue paper under his arm; this
he spread out on a board and both men examined it carefully. Next they
crossed to the lumber pile and looked it over. They were evidently
making some sort of calculation. Then they pulled on their overalls and
went to work, and in one corner of the yard--the corner opposite North's
window--they began to build his scaffold. The thing took shape before
his very eyes, a monstrous anachronism.
General Herbert had not been idle while the unhurried preparations for
John North's execution were going forward; whatever his secret feeling
was, neither his words nor his manner conceded defeat. Belknap had tried
every expedient known to criminal practice to secure a new trial but had
failed, and it was now evident that without the intervention of the
governor, North's doom was fixed unalterably. Belknap quitted Mount Hope
for Columbus, and there followed daily letters and almost hourly
telegrams, but General Herbert felt from the first that the lawyer was
not sanguine of success. Then on the eighth of June, two days before the
execution, came a long message from the lawyer. His wife was ill, her
recovery was doubtful; the governor was fully possessed of the facts in
North's case and was considering them, would the general come at once to
Columbus?
This telegram reached Idle Hour late at night, and the next morning
father and daughter were driven into Mount Hope. The pleasant life with
its agreeable ordering which the general had known for ten peaceful
years had resolved itself into a mad race with time. The fearful, the
monstrous, seemed to reach out and grip him with skeleton fingers. Like
the pale silent girl at his side, he was knowing the horror of death,
and a horror that was beyond death.
They stopped at the jail to say good-by to North, and were then driven
rapidly to the station. The journey of about two hours seemed
interminable, but they rarely spoke. Elizabeth did not change the
position she had assumed when they took their seats. She leaned lightly
against her father's broad shoulder and her hands were clasped in her
lap.
For weeks the situation had been absolutely pitiless. Their wrecked
efforts were at the door of every hope, and if this mission failed--but
it would not fail! All they had come to ask was the life of an innocent
man, and surely the governor, unaffected by local prejudice, must
realize John North's innocence.
It was two o'clock when they reached their destination, and as they left
the car the general said:
"We will go to the hotel first. Either Judge Belknap will be there, or
there will be some word for us."
At the hotel they found, not Belknap, but a letter which he had left.
The governor was suffering from a slight indisposition and was confined
to the house. Belknap had made an appointment for him, and he would be
expected. The general crushed the sheet of paper between his fingers
with weary impatience.
"We'll see the governor at once. I'll call a carriage," he said briefly.
Five minutes later, when they had left the hotel, Elizabeth asked:
"What did Judge Belknap say?"
"Nothing, dear, nothing--the matter remains just as it was. The governor
is expecting us."
"What do you think, father? This is our last hope. Oh, do you realize
that?"
She rested her hand on his arm.
"It's going to be all right!" her father assured her.
Then there was silence between them until they drew up before the
governor's house.
Side by side they mounted the steps. The general's ring was answered by
a man-servant, who took their cards after showing them into a small
reception-room. He returned after a moment to say that the governor was
occupied and could not possibly see them until the afternoon. The
general's face was blank. He had never considered it possible that the
governor would refuse to see him at his convenience. Certainly there had
been a time when no politician of his party in the state nor in the
nation would have ventured this; but it was evident the last ten years
had made a difference in his position. Elizabeth gazed up fearfully into
her father's face. What did this mean; was it merely a subterfuge on the
governor's part to avoid a painful interview? Perhaps, after all, it
would have been better had she remained at the hotel. Her father read
her thoughts.
"It's all right--be brave!" he whispered. He turned to the servant.
"Will you kindly learn for me at what hour the governor will be at
liberty?" he said stiffly.
"Oh, he must see us!" cried Elizabeth, the moment they were alone.
"Of course he must, and he will," the general said.
But the governor's refusal to see them at once rankled within him. His
sunburnt cheeks were a brick red and there was an angry light in his
gray eyes. The servant did not return, but in his stead came a dapper
young fellow, the governor's private secretary.
"General Herbert?" he asked inquiringly, as he entered the room.
The general acknowledged his identity by an inclination of the head.
"The governor will be most happy to see you at any time after three
o'clock. May I tell him you will call then?" asked the secretary, and he
glanced, not without sympathy and understanding, at Elizabeth.
"We will return at three," the general said.
"He regrets his inability to see you now," murmured the secretary, and
again he permitted his glance to dwell on the girl's pale beauty.
He bowed them from the room and from the house. When the door closed on
them, Elizabeth turned swiftly to her father.
"He is cruel, heartless, to keep us in suspense. A word, a moment--might
have meant so much to us--" she sobbed.
A spasm of pain contracted her father's rugged features.
"He will see us; he is a busy man with unceasing demands on his time,
but we have this appointment. Be brave, dear, just a little longer!" he
said tenderly.
"I'll try to be, but there is only to-day--and to-morrow--" she
faltered.
"Hush, you must not think of that!"
"I can think of nothing else!"
How they lived through the long hours the general never knew, but at
last three o'clock came and they were again at the governor's door. It
was opened by the servant who had admitted them earlier in the day.
"We have an appointment with the governor," said General Herbert
briefly, pushing past him.
"Yes, sir; I will tell him you are here as soon as he comes in," said
the man.
"He's out, then?" and General Herbert wheeled on the man.
"Yes, but he's expected back any moment, sir."
"It will be all right," her father again assured Elizabeth, speaking
with forced cheerfulness when they were alone.
Ten--twenty minutes slipped by; minutes that were infinitely precious,
then a step sounded in the hall. It was the servant who entered the
room, however. He came to say that a message had that moment been
received from the governor; he was detained at the capitol, and probably
would not reach home before five o'clock.
"Does he say he will see us there?" asked the general.
"He didn't mention you, sir; perhaps he has forgotten, but I thought
you'd wish to know."
"Thank you." The general turned to his daughter. "I think we'd better go
to the capitol."
The carriage was still at the door and they hurried out to it and were
whirled across town. As they came to a stand before the capitol, General
Herbert, without waiting for Elizabeth, sprang out and strode into the
building and up the familiar stairs to the executive chambers. The door
of the outer office stood open. A colored janitor was sweeping the room.
"Who you want, boss?" he asked, stopping his work and leaning on the
handle of his broom.
"The governor--where is he?" demanded the general.
"You's too late, boss, he's done gone out."
A sense of futility and defeat almost overwhelmed the old general. He
was silent for a moment since he dared not trust himself to speak, then
he asked:
"Is the governor's secretary here?"
The man shook his head.
"Him and the governor left together. There ain't no one here now,
they've done for the day."
"Then the governor has gone home?"
"I expect that's where he went, yes, sir."
General Herbert swung about and hurried from the room. In the hall he
met Elizabeth.
"Did you see him?" she asked eagerly.
"Not here," he answered huskily.
Her eyes grew wide with terror, and she swayed as if about to fall, but
her father put out a sunburnt hand for her support.
"We must go back!" he said, mastering himself at sight of her suffering.
"We have missed him here, he's gone home, that is all--it means
nothing."
They drove in silence through the streets. Pallid, fearful, and
speechless in her suffering, Elizabeth leaned back in her seat. The hope
that had sustained her was lost in the realization of defeat. There was
nothing beyond; this was failure, complete and final; the very end of
effort! Suddenly her father's big hand closed about the small one which
rested in her lap.
"You must not give up; I tell you it will be all right!" he insisted.
"He is avoiding us!" she cried chokingly. "Oh, what can we do when he
will not even see us!"
"Yes, he will. We have been unfortunate, that is all."
"Wretchedly unfortunate!" she moaned.
They had reached their destination, and this time slowly and uncertainly
they ascended the steps. With his hand upon the bell, the general
hesitated for an instant; so much was at stake! Then a bell sounded in
some distant part of the house, and after a brief interval the door was
opened to them.
"I am sorry, sir, but the governor has not returned."
The general thrust a bill into the man's hand, saying:
"The moment he comes in, see that he gets my card."
Again there was delay. General Herbert, consumed by impatience, crossed
and recrossed the room. Elizabeth stood by the window, one hand parting
the heavy curtains. It was already late afternoon. The day had been
wasted, and the hours that remained to them were perilously few. But
more than the thought of North's death, the death itself filled her mind
with unspeakable imaginings. The power to control her thoughts was lost,
and her terrors took her where they would, until North's very death
struggles became a blinding horror. Somewhere in the silent house, a
door opened and closed.
"At last!" said the general, under his breath.
But it was only the governor's secretary who entered the room. He halted
in the doorway and glanced from father to daughter. There was no
mistaking the look on his face.
"How much longer are we to be kept in doubt?" asked General Herbert, in
a voice that indicated both his dread and his sense of insult.
"The governor deeply regrets that there should have been this delay--"
began the secretary.
"He is ready to see us now?" General Herbert interrupted.
"I regret--"
"What do you regret? Do you mean to tell me that he will not see us?"
demanded the general.
"The governor has left town."
The angry color flamed into the old man's cheeks. His sorely tried
patience was on the point of giving way, but a cry from the window
recalled him.
"Where has he gone?"
"He left for the East at four o'clock," faltered the secretary, after a
moment of wretched irresolution.
The general's face became white, as his anger yielded to a more powerful
emotion.
"Impossible!" he cried.
"The North matter has been left in my hands," said the secretary
haltingly.
The general's hope revived as he heard this. He stepped to Elizabeth's
side and rested his hand protectingly on her shoulder.
"You have the governor's decision?" he asked.
"Yes," answered the secretary unsteadily.
There was a moment's silence.
"What is it?" The general's voice was strained and unnatural.
"He regrets it, but he does not deem it proper for him to interfere with
the decision of the court. He has had the most eminent legal advice in
this case--"
A choking inarticulate cry from Elizabeth interrupted him.
"My God!" cried her father, as Elizabeth's groping hands clung to him.
He felt the shudder that wrenched her slim body. "Be brave!" he
whispered, slipping his arms about her.
"Oh, father--father--" she sobbed.
"We will go home," said the general.
He looked up from the bowed head that rested against his shoulder,
expecting to find the secretary still standing by the door, but that
dapper young man had stolen from the room.
"Yes, take me home," said Elizabeth.
He led her from the house and the door closed behind them on their last
hope. Both shared in the bitter consciousness of this. They had been
brought face to face with the inexorable demands of life, they had been
foredoomed to failure from the very beginning.
"Father?" she gasped.
"Yes, dear?" He spoke with infinite tenderness.
"Is there nothing more?"
"Nothing, but to go home."
Deeply as he felt for her, he knew that he realized only an
infinitesimal part of her suffering.
"The governor has refused to interfere?"
"You heard what he said, dear," he answered simply.
"And I have to go back and tell John that after all our hopes, after all
our prayers--"
"Perhaps you would better not go back," he suggested.
"Not go back? No, I must see him! You would not deny me this--"
"I would deny you nothing," said her father fervently.
"Dismiss the carriage, and we will walk to the station; there is time?"
"Yes."
For a little while they walked on in silence, the girl's hands clasped
about her father's arm.
"I can not understand it yet!" said Elizabeth at length, speaking in a
fearful whisper. "It is incredible. Oh, can't you save him--can't you?"
The general did not trust himself to answer her.