The tobacco was dry now, for the autumn was at hand. It must come to
case yet, then it must be stripped, the grades picked out, and left
then in bulk for sale. With all this Jason had nothing to do. He had
done good work on his books during the spring and autumn, such good
work that, with the old president's gladly given permission, he was
allowed a special examination which admitted him with but one or two
"conditions" into his own sophomore class. Then was there the
extraordinary spectacle of a college boy--quiet, serious,
toiling--making the slow way toward the humanities under charge of
murder and awaiting trial for his life. And that course Jason Hawn
followed with a dignity, reticence, and self-effacement that won the
steadily increasing respect of every student and teacher within the
college walls. A belief in his innocence became wide-spread, and that
coming trial began to be regarded in time as a trial of the good name
of the college itself. A change of venue had been obtained and the
trial was to be held in the college town. It came in mid-December.
Jason, neatly dressed, sat beside his lawyer, and his mother, in black,
and Mavis sat quite near him. In the first row among the spectators
were Gray and Marjorie and Colonel Pendleton. Behind them was John
Burnham, and about him and behind him were several other professors,
while the room was crowded with students. The boy was pale when he went
to the witness-chair, and the court-room was as still as a wooded
ravine in the hills when he began to tell his story, which apparently
no other soul than his own lawyer had ever heard; indeed it was soon
apparent that even he had never heard it all.
"I went down there to kill him," the boy said calmly, though his eyes
were two deep points of fire--so calmly, indeed, that as one man the
audience gasped audibly--"an' I reckon all of ye know why. My grandpap
al'ays told me the meanest thing a man could do was to shoot another
man in the back. I tried for three days to git face to face with him. I
knowed he had a gun all the time, an' I meant to give him a fair chance
fer his life. That mornin' I heard through the walls of the
boardin'-house I was in--an' I didn't know who was doin' the
talkin'--that the man was goin' to be waylaid right then an' I run over
to that ex-ec-u-tive building to reach Steve Hawn an' keep HIM anyways
from doin' the shootin'. I heard the shots soon as I got inside the
door, and purty soon I met Steve runnin' down the stairs. 'I didn't do
it!' Steve says, 'but any feller from the mountains better git away
from HERE.' We run out through the yard an' got into Steve's buggy an'
travelled the road till we was ketched--an' that's all I know."
And that was all. No other fact, no other admission, no other statement
could the rigid, bitter cross-examination bring from the lad's lips
than just those words; and those words alone the jury carried to their
room. Nor were they long gone. Back they came, and again the court-room
was as the holding in of one painful breath, and then tears started in
the eyes of the woman in black, the mountain girl by her side, and in
Marjorie's, and the court-room broke into stifled cheer, for the words
all heard were:
"Not guilty."
At the gate of the college a crowd of students, led by Gray Pendleton,
awaited Jason. The boy was borne aloft on their shoulders through the
yard amid the cheers of boys and girls--was borne on into the
gymnasium, and before the lad could quite realize what was going on he
heard himself cheered as captain of the foot-ball team for the next
year, and was once more borne out, around and aloft again--while John
Burnham with a full heart, and Mavis and Marjorie with wet eyes, looked
smilingly on. A week later Arch Hawn persuaded the boy to allow him to
lend him money to complete his course and a week later still it was
Christmas again. Christmas night there was a glad gathering at Colonel
Pendleton's. Even St. Hilda was there, and she and John Burnham, and
Colonel Pendleton and Mrs. Pendleton, Gray and Mavis, and Marjorie and
Jason, danced the Virginia reel together, and all the stars were stars
of Bethlehem to Mavis and Jason Hawn as they crunched across the frozen
fields at dawn for home.