"The prisoner will stand," droned out the clerk in the Court of General
Sessions. "Filippo Portoghese, you are convicted of assault with intent to
kill. Have you anything to say why sentence should not be passed upon
you?"
A sallow man with a hopeless look in his heavy eyes rose slowly in his
seat and stood facing the judge. There was a pause in the hum and bustle
of the court as men turned to watch the prisoner. He did not look like a
man who would take a neighbor's life, and yet so nearly had he done so, of
set purpose it had been abundantly proved, that his victim would carry
the disfiguring scar of the bullet to the end of his life, and only by
what seemed an almost miraculous chance had escaped death. The story as
told by witnesses and substantially uncontradicted was this:
Portoghese and Vito Ammella, whom he shot, were neighbors under the same
roof. Ammella kept the grocery on the ground floor. Portoghese lived
upstairs in the tenement. He was a prosperous, peaceful man, with a family
of bright children, with whom he romped and played happily when home from
his barber shop. The Black Hand fixed its evil eye upon the family group
and saw its chance. One day a letter came demanding a thousand dollars.
Portoghese put it aside with the comment that this was New York, not
Italy. Other letters followed, threatening harm to his children.
Portoghese paid no attention, but his wife worried. One day the baby,
little Vito, was missing, and in hysterics she ran to her husband's shop
crying that the Black Hand had stolen the child.
The barber hurried home and sought high and low. At last he came upon the
child sitting on Ammella's doorstep; he had wandered away and brought up
at the grocery; asked where he had been, the child pointed to the store.
Portoghese flew in and demanded to know what Ammella was doing with his
boy. The grocer was in a bad humor, and swore at him. There was an
altercation, and Ammella attacked the barber with a broom, beating him and
driving him away from his door. Black with anger, Portoghese ran to his
room and returned with a revolver. In the fight that followed he shot
Ammella through the head.
He was arrested and thrown into jail. In the hospital the grocer hovered
between life and death for many weeks. Portoghese lay in the Tombs
awaiting trial for more than a year, believing still that he was the
victim of a Black Hand conspiracy. When at last the trial came on, his
savings were all gone, and of the once prosperous and happy man only a
shadow was left. He sat in the court-room and listened in moody silence to
the witnesses who told how he had unjustly suspected and nearly murdered
his friend. He was speedily convicted, and the day of his sentence was
fixed for Christmas Eve. It was certain that it would go hard with him.
The Italians were too prone to shoot and stab, said the newspapers, and
the judges were showing no mercy.
The witnesses had told the truth, but there were some things they did not
know and that did not get into the evidence. The prisoner's wife was ill
from grief and want; their savings of years gone to lawyer's fees, they
were on the verge of starvation. The children were hungry. With the bells
ringing in the glad holiday, they were facing bitter homelessness in the
winter streets, for the rent was in arrears and the landlord would not
wait. And "Papa" away now for the second Christmas, and maybe for many yet
to come! Ten, the lawyer and jury had said: this was New York, not Italy.
In the Tombs the prisoner said it over to himself, bitterly. He had
thought only of defending his own.
So now he stood looking the judge and the jury in the face, yet hardly
seeing them. He saw only the prison gates opening for him, and the gray
walls shutting him out from his wife and little ones for--how many
Christmases was it? One, two, three--he fell to counting them over
mentally and did not hear when his lawyer whispered and nudged him with
his elbow. The clerk repeated his question, but he merely shook his head.
What should he have to say? Had he not said it to these men and they did
not believe him? About little Vito who was lost, and his wife who cried
her eyes out because of the Black Hand letters. He--
There was a step behind him, and a voice he knew spoke. It was the voice
of Ammella, his neighbor, with whom he used to be friends
before--before that day.
[Illustration: "PLEASE, YOUR HONOR, LET THIS MAN GO! IT IS CHRISTMAS."]
"Please, your Honor, let this man go! It is Christmas, and we should have
no unkind thoughts. I have none against Filippo here, and I ask you to let
him go."
It grew very still in the court-room as he spoke and paused for an answer.
Lawyers looked up from their briefs in astonishment. The jurymen in the
box leaned forward and regarded the convicted man and his victim with rapt
attention. Such a plea had not been heard in that place before. Portoghese
stood mute; the voice sounded strange and far away to him. He felt a hand
upon his shoulder that was the hand of a friend, and shifted his feet
uncertainly, but made no response. The gray-haired judge regarded the two
gravely but kindly.
"Your wish comes from a kind heart," he said. "But this man has been
convicted. The law must be obeyed. There is nothing in it that allows us
to let a guilty man go free."
The jurymen whispered together and one of them arose.
"Your Honor," he said, "a higher law than any made by man came into the
world at Christmas--that we love one another. These men would obey it.
Will you not let them? The jury pray as one man that you let mercy go
before justice on this Holy Eve."
A smile lit up Judge O'Sullivan's face. "Filippo Portoghese," he said,
"you are a very fortunate man. The law bids me send you to prison for ten
years, and but for a miraculous chance would have condemned you to death.
But the man you maimed for life pleads for you, and the jury that
convicted you begs that you go free. The Court remembers what you have
suffered and it knows the plight of your family, upon whom the heaviest
burden of your punishment would fall. Go, then, to your home. And to you,
gentlemen, a happy holiday such as you have given him and his! This court
stands adjourned."
The voice of the crier was lost in a storm of applause. The jury rose to
their feet and cheered judge, complainant, and defendant. Portoghese, who
had stood as one dazed, raised eyes that brimmed with tears to the bench
and to his old neighbor. He understood at last. Ammella threw his arm
around him and kissed him on both cheeks, his disfigured face beaming
with joy. One of the jurymen, a Jew, put his hand impulsively in his
pocket, emptied it into his hat, and passed the hat to his neighbor. All
the others followed his example. The court officer dropped in half a
dollar as he stuffed its contents into the happy Italian's pocket. "For
little Vito," he said, and shook his hand.
"Ah!" said the foreman of the jury, looking after the reunited friends
leaving the court-room arm in arm; "it is good to live in New York. A
merry Christmas to you, Judge!"