the right of him. From time to time he turned to smile reassuringly at
them with a confidence that he was far from feeling. His mother
smiled back through glistening grey eyes, all the while marking with a
twinge at her heart the great sharp lines that were cutting deep into
the big boyish face of her son. Mostly she was thinking of the
morning, just a few months ago when her little boy, suddenly and
unaccountably grown to the size of a tall man, had been obliged to
lift up her face to kiss her. He was going down into the big world, to
conquer it and bring it home for her. With that boyish forgetfulness
of everything but his own plans of conquest, which is at once the
pride and the heart-stab of every mother with her man child, he had
kissed her and told her the old, old lie that we all have told--that
he would be back in a little while, that all would be the same again.
And she had smiled up into his face and had compounded the lie with
him.
Then in that very moment the man Rogers had come. And the mother heart
in her was not gentle at the thought of him. He had come like a trail
of evil across their lives, embittering the hearts of all of them.
Never since she had seen him had she slept a good night. Never had she
been able to drop asleep without a hard thought of him. Even now, the
thought of him lying in an unhonoured grave among the ashes of the
hills could not soften her heart toward him. The gentle, kindly heart
of her was very near to hating even the dead as she thought of her
boy brought to this pass because of that man.
Ruth Lansing had come twice to the county jail in Danton with his
mother to see Jeffrey. They had not been left alone, but she had clung
to him and kissed him boldly as though by her right before all men.
The first time he had watched her sharply, looking almost savagely to
see her shrink away from him in pity and fear of his guilt, as he had
seen men who had been his friends shrink away from him. But there had
been not a shadow of that in Ruth, and his heart leaped now as he
remembered how she had walked unafraid into his arms, looking him
squarely and bravely in the eyes and crying to him to forget the
foolish words that she had said to him that last day in the hills. In
that pulsing moment Jeffrey had looked into her eyes and had seen
there not the love of the little girl that he had known but the
unbounded love and confidence of the woman who would give herself to
him for life or death. He had seen it; the look of all the women of
earth who love, whose feet go treading in tenderness and undying pity,
whose hands are fashioned for the healing of torn hearts.
It was only when she had gone, and when he in the loneliness of his
cell was reliving the hour, that he remembered that she had scarcely
listened to his story of the morning in the hills. Of course, she had
heard his story from his mother and was probably already so familiar
with it that it had lost interest for her. But no, that was not like
Ruth. She was always a direct little person, who wanted to know the
exact how and why of everything first hand. She would not have been
satisfied with anybody's telling of the matter but his own.
Then a horrible suspicion leaped into his mind and struck at his
heart. Could it be that she had over-acted it all? Could it be that
she had brushed aside his story because she really did not believe it
and could not listen to it without betraying her doubt? And had she
blinded him with her pity? Had she acted all--!
He threw himself down on his cot and writhed in blind despair. Might
not even his mother have deceived him! Might not she too have been
acting! What did he care now for name or liberty, or life itself! The
girl had mocked him with what he thought was love, when it was
only--!
But his good sense brought him back and set him on his feet. Ruth was
no actress. And if she had been the greatest actress the world had
ever seen she could not have acted that flooding love light into her
eyes.
He threw back his head, laughing softly, and began to pace his cell
rapidly. There was some other explanation. Either she had deliberately
put his story aside in order to keep the whole of their little time
together entirely to themselves, or Ruth knew something that made his
story unimportant.
She had been through the fire herself. Both she and the Bishop must
have gone straight through it from their home in its front line to the
rear of it at French Village. How, no one could tell. Jeffrey had
heard wild tales of the exploit-- The French people had made many
wonders of the coming of these two to them in the hour of their
deliverance, the one the Bishop of their souls, the other the young
girl just baptised by Holy Church and but little differing from the
angels.
Who could tell, thought Jeffrey, what the fire might have revealed to
one or both of these two as they went through it. Perhaps there were
other men who had not been accounted for. Then he remembered Rafe
Gadbeau. He had been with Rogers. He had once waylaid Jeffrey at
Rogers' command. Might it not be that the bullet which killed Rogers
was intended for Jeffrey himself! He must have been almost in the line
of that bullet, for Rogers had been facing him squarely and the bullet
had struck Rogers fairly in the back of the head.
Or again, people had said that Rogers had possessed some sort of
mysterious hold over Rafe Gadbeau, and that Gadbeau did his bidding
unwillingly, under a pressure of fear. What if Gadbeau there under
the excitement of the fire, and certain that another man would be
charged with the killing, had decided that here was the time and place
to rid himself of the man who had made him his slave!
The thing fascinated him, as was natural; and, pacing his cell,
stopping between mouthfuls of his food as he sat at the jail table,
sitting up in his cot in the middle of the night to think, Jeffrey
caught at every scrap of theory and every thread of fact that would
fit into the story as it must have happened. He wandered into many
blind trails of theory and explanation, but, strange as it was, he at
last came upon the truth--and stuck to it.
Gadbeau had killed Rogers. Gadbeau had been caught in the fire and had
almost burned to death. He had managed to reach the place where Ruth
and the Bishop had found refuge. He had died there in their presence.
He had confessed. The Catholics always told the truth when they were
going to die. Ruth and the Bishop had heard him. Ruth _knew_. The
Bishop _knew_.
When Ruth came again, he watched her closely; and saw--just what he
had expected to see. Ruth _knew_. It was not only her love and her
confidence in him. She had none of the little whispering, torturing
doubts that must sometimes, unbidden, rise to frighten even his
mother. Ruth _knew_.
That she should not tell him, or give him any outward hint of what
she was hiding in her mind, did not surprise him. It was a very
serious matter this with Catholics. It was a sacred matter with
anybody, to carry the secret of a dead man. Ruth would not speak
unnecessarily of it. When the proper time came, and there was need,
she would speak. For the present--Ruth _knew_. That was enough.
When the Bishop came down from Alden to see him, Jeffrey watched him
as he had watched Ruth. He had never been very observant. He had never
had more than a boy's careless indifference and disregard of details
in his way of looking at men and things. But much thinking in the dark
had now given him intuitions that were now sharp and sensitive as
those of a woman. He was quick to know that the grip of the Bishop's
hand on his, the look of the Bishop's eye into his, were not those of
a man who had been obliged to fight against doubts in order to keep
his faith in him. That grip and that look were not those of a man who
wished to believe, who tried to believe, who told himself and was
obliged to keep on telling himself that he believed in spite of all.
No. Those were the grip and the look of a man who _knew_. The Bishop
_knew_.
It was even easier to understand the Bishop's silence than it had been
to see why Ruth might not speak of what she knew. The Bishop was an
official in a high place, entrusted with a dark secret. He must not
speak of such things without a very serious cause. But, of course,
there was nothing in this world so sacred as the life of an innocent
man. Of course, when the time and the need came, the Bishop would
speak.
So Jeffrey had pieced together his fragments of fact and deduction. So
he had watched and discovered and reasoned and debated with himself.
He had not, of course, said a word of these things to any one. The
result was that, while he listened to the plans which his lawyer,
young Emmet Dardis, laid for his defence--plans which, in the face of
the incontestable facts which would be brought against them, would
certainly amount to little or nothing--he really paid little attention
to them. For, out of his reasoning and out of the things his heart
felt, he had built up around himself an inner citadel, as it were, of
defence which no attack could shake. He had come to feel, had made
himself feel, that his life and his name were absolutely safe in the
keeping of these two people--the one a girl who loved him and who
would give her life for him, and the other a true friend, a man of
God, a true man. He had nothing to fear. When the time came these two
would speak. It was true that he was outwardly depressed by the
concise and bitter conviction in the words of the prosecuting
attorney. For Lemuel Squires was of the character that makes the most
terrible of criminal prosecutors--an honest, narrow man who was
always absolutely convinced of the guilt of the accused from the
moment that a charge had been made. But inwardly he had no fear.
The weight of evidence that would be brought against him, the fact
that his own best friends would be obliged to give their oaths against
him, the very feeling of being accused and of having to scheme and
plan to prove his innocence to a world that--except here and
there--cared not a whit whether he was innocent or guilty, all these
things bowed his head and brought his eyes down to the floor. But they
could not touch that inner wall that he had built around himself. Ruth
_knew_; the Bishop _knew_.
The rasping speech of the prosecutor was finished at last.
Old Erskine Beasley was the first witness called.
The prosecuting attorney took him sharply in hand at once for though
he had been called as a witness for the prosecution it was well known
that he was unwilling to testify at all. So the attorney had made no
attempt to school him beforehand, and he was determined now to allow
him to give only direct answers to the questions put to him.
Two or three times the old man attempted to explain, at the end of an
answer, just why he had gone up into the high hills the night before
the twentieth of August--that he had heard that Rogers and a band of
men had gone into the woods to start fires. But he was ordered to
stop, and these parts of his answers were kept out of the record.
Finally he was rebuked savagely by the Judge and ordered to confine
himself to answering the lawyer's questions, on pain of being arrested
for contempt. It was a high-handed proceeding that showed the temper
and the intention of the Judge and a stir of protest ran around the
courtroom. But old Erskine Beasley was quelled. He gave only the
answers that the prosecutor forced from him.
"Did you hear a shot fired?" he was asked.
"Yes."
"Did you hear two shots fired?"
"No."
"Did you see Jeffrey Whiting's gun?"
"Yes."
"Did you examine it?"
"Yes."
"Had it been fired off?"
"Yes."
"Excused," snapped the prosecutor. And the old man, almost in tears,
came down from the stand. He knew that his simple yes and no answers
had made the most damaging sort of evidence.
Then the prosecutor went back in the story to establish a motive. He
called several witnesses who had been agents of the railroad and
associated in one way or another with the murdered man in his efforts
to get options on the farm lands in the hills. Even these witnesses,
though they were ready to give details and opinions which might have
been favorable to his side of the case, he held down strictly to
answering with a word his own carefully thought out questions.
With these answers the prosecutor built up a solid continuity of cause
and effect from the day when Rogers had first come into the hills to
offer Jeffrey Whiting a part in the work with himself right up to the
moment when the two had faced each other that morning on Bald
Mountain.
He showed that Jeffrey Whiting had begun to undermine and oppose
Rogers' work from the first. He showed why. Jeffrey Whiting came of a
family well known and trusted in the hills. The young man had been
quick to grasp the situation and to believe that he could keep the
people from dealing at all with Rogers. Rogers' work would then be a
failure. Jeffrey Whiting would then be pointed to as the only man who
could get the options from the people. They would sell or hold out at
his word. The railroad would have to deal with him direct, and at his
terms.
Jeffrey Whiting had gotten promises from many of the owners that they
would not sell or even sign any paper until such time as he gave them
the word. Did those promises bind the people to him? They did. Did
they have the same effect as if Jeffrey Whiting had obtained actual
options on the property? Yes. Would the people stand by their
promises? Yes. Then Whiting had actually been obtaining what were
really options to himself, while pretending to hold the people back in
their own interest? Yes.
The prosecutor went on to draw out answer after answer tending to show
that it was not really a conflict between the people and the railroad
that had been making trouble in the hills all summer; that it was, in
fact, merely a personal struggle for influence and gain between
Jeffrey Whiting and the man who had been killed. It was skilfully done
and drawn out with all the exaggerated effect of truth which bald
negative and affirmative answers invariably carry.
He went on to show that a bitter hatred had grown up between the two
men. Rogers had been accused of hiring men to get Whiting out of the
way at a time in the early summer when many of the people about French
Village had been prepared to sign Rogers' options. Rogers had been
obliged to fly from the neighbourhood on account of Whiting's anger.
He had not returned to the hills until the day before he was killed.
The people in the hills had talked freely of what had happened on Bald
Mountain on the morning of August twentieth and in the hills during
the afternoon and night preceding. The prosecutor knew the incidents
and knew what men had said to each other. He now called Myron
Stocking.
"Did you meet Jeffrey Whiting on the afternoon of August nineteenth?"
was the question.
"I went lookin' for him, to tell--"
"Answer, yes or no?" shouted the attorney.
"Yes," the witness admitted sullenly.
"Did you tell him that Rogers was in the hills?"
"Yes."
"Did he take his gun from you and start immediately?"
"He followed me," the witness began. But the Judge rapped warningly
and the attorney yelled:
"Yes or no?"
"Yes."
"Did you see Rogers in the morning?"
"Yes, he was settin' fire to--" The Judge hammering furiously with his
gavel drowned his words. The attorney went on:
"Did you hear a shot?"
"Yes."
"Did you hear two shots?"
"The fire"--was making a lot of noise, he tried to say. But his voice
was smothered by eruptions from the court and the attorney. He was
finally obliged to say that he had heard but one shot. Then he was
asked:
"What did you say when you came up and saw the dead man?"
"I said, 'Mine got away, Jeff.'"
"What else did you say?"
"I said, 'What's the difference, any of us would've done it if we had
the chance.'"
"Whiting's gun had been fired?" asked the attorney, working back.
"Yes."
"One question more and I will excuse you," said the attorney, with a
show of friendliness--"I see it is hard for you to testify against
your friend. Did you, standing there with the facts fresh before you,
conclude that Jeffrey Whiting had fired the shot which killed
Rogers?"
To this Emmet Dardis vigorously objected that it was not proper, that
the answer would not be evidence. But the Judge overruled him sharply,
reminding him that this witness had been called by the prosecution,
that it was not the business of opposing counsel to protect him. The
witness found himself forced to answer a simple yes.
One by one the other men who had been present that fatal morning were
called. Their answers were identical, and as each one was forced to
give his yes to that last fateful question, condemning Jeffrey Whiting
out of the mouths of his friends who had stood on the very ground of
the murder, it seemed that every avenue of hope for him was closing.
On cross-examination, Emmet Dardis could do little with the witnesses.
He was gruffly reminded by the Judge that the witnesses were not his,
that he must not attempt to draw any fresh stories from them, that he
might only examine them on the facts which they had stated to the
District Attorney. And as the prosecutor had pinned his witnesses down
absolutely to answers of known fact, there was really nothing in their
testimony that could be attacked.
With a feeling of uselessness and defeat, Emmet Dardis let the last
witness go. The State promptly rested its case.
Dardis began calling his witnesses. He realised how pitifully
inadequate their testimony would be when placed beside the chain of
facts which the District Attorney had pieced together. They were in
the main character witnesses, hardly more. They could tell only of
their long acquaintance with Jeffrey Whiting, of their belief in him,
of their firm faith that in holding the people back from giving the
options to Rogers and the railroad he had been acting in absolute good
faith and purely in the interests of the people. Not one of these men
had been near the scene of the murder, for the railroad had planned
its campaign comprehensively and had subpoenaed for its side every man
who could have had any direct knowledge of the events leading up to
the tragedy. As line after line of their testimony was stricken from
the record, as being irrelevant, it was seen that the defence had
little or no case. Finally the Judge, tiring of ruling on the single
objections, made a general ruling that no testimony which did not tend
to reveal the identity of the man who had shot Rogers could go into
the record.
Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden sat anxiously watching the course of
the trial. Beside him sat little Father Ponfret from French Village.
The little French priest looked up from time to time and guardedly
studied the long angular white head of his bishop as it towered above
him. He did not know, but he could guess some of the struggle that was
going on in the mind and the heart of the Bishop.
The Bishop had come down to the trial to give what aid he could, in
the way of showing his confidence and faith, to the case of the boy
who stood in peril of his life. In the beginning, when he had first
heard of Jeffrey's arrest, he had not thought it possible that, even
had he been guilty of actually firing the shot, Jeffrey could be
convicted under such circumstances. Men must see that the act was in
defence of life and property. But as he listened to the progress of
the trial he realised sadly that he had very much underestimated the
seriousness of the railroad people in the matter and the hold which
they had upon the machinery of justice in Racquette County.
He had gladly offered to go upon the stand and tell the reason why
Jeffrey Whiting had entered into this fight against the railroad. He
would associate himself and his own good name with the things that
Jeffrey Whiting had done, so that the two might stand before men
together. But he now saw that it would be of no avail. His words would
be swept aside as irrelevant.
One thing and only one thing would now avail Jeffrey Whiting. This
morning on his arrival in Danton, the Bishop had been angered at
learning that the two men whose lives he had saved that night by the
lake at French Village had escaped from the train as they were being
brought from Lowville to Danton to testify at this trial.
Whether they could have told anything of value to Jeffrey Whiting was
not known. Certainly they were now gone, and, almost surely, by the
connivance of the railroad people. The Bishop had their confession in
his pocket at this minute, but there was nothing in it concerning the
murder. He had intended to read it into the record of the trial. He
saw that he would not be allowed to do so.
One thing and only one thing would now avail Jeffrey Whiting. Jeffrey
Whiting would be condemned to death, unless, within the hour, a man or
woman should rise up in this room and swear: Jeffrey Whiting did not
kill Samuel Rogers. Rafe Gadbeau did the deed. I saw him. Or--He told
me so.
The Bishop remembered how that day last winter he had set the boy upon
this course which had brought him here into this court and into the
shadow of public disgrace and death. If Jeffrey Whiting had actually
fired the shot that had cut off a human life, would not he, Joseph,
Bishop of Alden, have shared a measure of the responsibility? He
would.
And if Jeffrey Whiting, through no fault of his own, but through a
chain of circumstances, stood now in danger of death, was not he,
Joseph Winthrop, who had started the boy into the midst of these
circumstances, in a way responsible? He was.
Could Joseph Winthrop by rising up in this court and saying: "Rafe
Gadbeau killed Samuel Rogers--He told me so"--could he thus save
Jeffrey Whiting from a felon's fate? He could. Nine words, no more,
would do.
And if he could so save Jeffrey Whiting and did not do what was
necessary--did not speak those nine words--would he, Joseph Winthrop,
be responsible for the death or at least the imprisonment and ruin of
Jeffrey Whiting? He would.
Then what would Joseph Winthrop do? Would he speak those nine words?
He would not.
There was no claim of life or death that had the force to break the
seal and let those nine words escape his lips.
There was no conflict, no battle, no indecision in the Bishop's mind
as he sat there waiting for his name to be called. He loved the boy
who sat there in the prisoner's stand before him. He felt responsible
for him and the situation in which he was. He cared nothing for the
dead man or the dead man's secret, as such. Yet he would go up there
and defy the law of humanity and the law of men, because he was bound
by the law that is beyond all other law; the law of the eternal
salvation of men's souls.
But there was no reasoning, no weighing of the issue in his mind. His
course was fixed by the eternal Institution of God. There was nothing
to be determined, nothing to be argued. He was caught between the
greater and the lesser law and he could only stand and be ground
between the working of the two.
If he had reasoned he would have said that Almighty God had ordained
the salvation of men through the confession of sin. Therefore the
salvation of men depended on the inviolability of the seal of the
confessional. But he did not reason. He merely sat through his
torture, waiting.
When his name was called, he walked heavily forward and took his place
standing beside the chair that was set for him.
At Dardis' question, the Bishop began to speak freely and rapidly. He
told of the coming of Jeffrey Whiting to him for advice. He repeated
what he had said to the boy, and from that point went on to sketch the
things that had been happening in the hills. He wanted to get clearly
before the minds of the jurymen the fact that he had advised and
directed Jeffrey Whiting in everything that the boy had done.
The Judge was loath to show any open discourtesy to the Bishop. But he
saw that he must stop him. His story could not but have a powerful
effect upon even this jury. Looking past the Bishop and addressing
Dardis, he said:
"Is this testimony pertinent?"
"It is, if Your Honor pardon me," said the Bishop, turning quickly.
"It goes to prove that Jeffrey Whiting could not have committed the
crime charged, any more than I could have done so."
The Bishop did not stop to consider carefully the logic or the legal
phraseology of his answer. He hurried on with his story to the jury.
He related his message from Albany to Jeffrey Whiting. He told of his
ride into the hills. He told of the capture of the two men in the
night at French Village. They should be here now as witnesses. They
had escaped. But he held in his hand a written confession, written and
sealed by a justice of the peace, made by the two men. He would read
this to the jury.
He began reading rapidly. But before he had gotten much past the
opening sentences, the Judge saw that this would not do. It was the
story of the plan to set the fire, and it must not be read in court.
He rapped sharply with his gavel, and when the Bishop stopped, he
asked:
"Is the murder of Samuel Rogers mentioned in that paper?"
"No, Your Honor. But there are--"
"It is irrelevant," interrupted the Judge shortly. "It cannot go
before the jury."
The Bishop was beaten; he knew he could do no more.