The morning dawned with a radiant disdain of mists. The wind was buoyant,
elated. The yellow sunshine, in its vivid perfection, might realize to
the imagination the light that first shone upon the world when God saw
that it was good. The air was no insipid fluid, breathed unconsciously.
It asserted its fragrance and freshness in every respiration. It
stirred the pulses like some rare wine; it seemed, indeed, the subtle
distillation of all the fruitage of the year, enriched with the bouquet
of the summer, and reminiscent of the delicate languors of the spring.
The sky had lifted itself to empyreal heights, luminously blue, with
occasional faint fleckings of fleecy vapors. The white summits of the
mountains were imposed against it with a distinctness that nullified
distance; even down their slopes, beyond the limits of the snowfall, the
polychromatic vestiges of autumn were visible, with no crudity of color
in these sharp contrasts, but with a soft blending of effect. Within
the court-house great blocks of sunshine fell upon the floor through
the dirty panes. Several of the sashes were thrown up to admit the air.
The rusty stove stood cold and empty. Many a day had passed since the
spider-webs that hung from the corners of the ceiling and draped the
bare windows of the great room had been disturbed. They might suggest to
the contemplative mind analogies to the labyrinthine snares of the law,
where the intrusive flies perish miserably, and the spiders batten. On
one of the window-panes a blue-bottle climbed the glass, intent on some
unimagined achievement; always slipping when near the top, and falling
buzzing drearily to the bottom, to recommence his laborious ascent in the
sunshine. Sometimes he would fly away, droning in melancholy disgust,
presently returning and renewing his futile efforts. He was a fine moral
example of perverted powers, and might well be commended to the notice
of human malcontents,—by nature fitted to soar, but sighing for feats of
pedestrianism. In contrast with the day in its alertness, its intense
brilliancy, yesterday was blurred, dim, like some distorted dream hardly
worth crediting as a portent. It might need as attestation of its reality
the jury which it had brought forth. They were all early in their places,
having been sequestered in charge of the sheriff, and having slept as it
were under the wing of the law. The privilege accorded by law, in phrase
of munificent bestowal,—to be tried by a jury of one’s peers,—seems
at times a gigantic practical joke, perpetrated by justice on simple
humanity. They were indeed Mink’s peers so far as ignorance, station,—for
most of them were mountaineers,—poverty, and prejudice might suffice.
Few were so intelligent, but none so lawless. Most of them were serving
under protest, indifferent to the dignity of the great engine of justice
which they represented. The two or three who showed willingness were
suspected, either by the defense or the prosecution, of occult motives.
All looked unkempt, stolid, dogged, even surlily stupid, as they sat in
two rows, chewing as with one gesture. Gradually, however, they visibly
brightened under the bland courtesy of Mr. Kenbigh, the attorney for the
State, who took early occasion to say—and he paraphrased the remark more
than once in the course of the day—that he had never had the pleasure of
trying a case before so intelligent a jury, or one to whom the sacred
interests of justice could be so safely entrusted. Harshaw, too, deported
himself toward them with a mollifying suavity which, to judge from his
ordinary manner, would have seemed impossible. He had a very pretty wit,
of a rough and extravagant style, that greatly commended him to them and
relieved the irksomeness of their duress. Mink had evidently been tutored
in regard to his demeanor toward them. He forbore to scowl at Pete Rood
with the fierce dismay his face had worn when he saw his enemy sworn on
the preceding night. But his dissembling was limited. He simply would
not look at Rood at all. There was an unaffected confidence, almost
indifference, upon his handsome face that occasioned much comment. It
had already been rumored among the bar, thence percolating through the
town at large, that the defense had discovered important testimony at
the last moment, but that for some reason Harshaw had desired to apply
for a continuance. The prisoner, it was said, had protested, and refused
downright, declaring that by nightfall, by to-morrow at farthest, he
would be on his way to his home in Hazel Valley. This rumor gave an added
interest to the moment when the witnesses were brought in to be sworn and
put under the rule. The crowd scanned each with a fruitless conjecture
as to which possessed the potent and significant knowledge on which the
defense relied. Several of them were women, demure as nuns in their
straight skirts and short waists and long, tunnel-like sun-bonnets. The
mountain men strode in, and stared about them freely, and were very bold,
in contrast to these decorous associates, with their grave, downcast eyes
and pale, passionless faces. The book was held toward the witnesses, two
or three were instructed to put their hands upon it, and then the clerk,
in a voice that might have proceeded from an automaton, so wooden was
the tone and elocution, recited the oath with a swiftness that seemed
profane. The group stood half in the slanting sunbeams, half in the
brown shadow, close about the clerk’s desk. Among the tall, muscular
figures of the mountain men and the pallid, attenuated elder women was
Alethea, looking like some fine illusion of the dusky shadow and gilded
sunshine, with her golden hair and her brown homespun dress. How shining
golden her hair, how exquisitely fresh and pure her face, how deep and
luminous and serious her brown eyes, showed as never before. Somehow she
was embellished by the incongruity of the sordid surroundings of the
court-room, the great, haggard, unkempt place, and the crude ugliness of
its frequenters. Her face was fully revealed, for she had pushed back
her bonnet that she might kiss the book. As she took it from the clerk’s
hand and pressed her lips to it, Mink’s heart stirred with a thrill it
had never before known. He was entering as a discoverer upon a new realm
of feeling. He experienced a subtle astonishment at the turbulence, the
fierceness, of his own emotion.
The judge was looking at her!
Gwinnan’s hand still held his pen. His head was still bent over the paper
on which he wrote. The casual side-glance of those discerning gray eyes
was prolonged into a steady gaze of surprise. He did not finish the word
he was writing. He laid the pen down presently. He watched her openly,
unconsciously, as she gave back the book, and as she walked with the
other witnesses into the adjoining room to await the calling of her name.
Mink could hardly analyze this strange emotional capacity, this new
endowment, that had come to him, so amazed was he by its unwonted
presence. He had not known that he could feel jealousy. He could not
identify it when it fell upon him. He had been so supreme in Alethea’s
heart, so arrogantly sure of its possession, that he had not cared for
Ben Doaks’s hopeless worship from afar; it did not even add to her
consequence in his eyes. But that this stranger of high degree—he would
not have phrased it thus, for he had been reared in ignorance of the
distinction of caste, yet he instinctively recognized it in the judge’s
power, his isolated official prominence, his utter removal from all the
conditions of the mountaineer’s world—that _this_ man should look at her
with that long, wondering gaze, should lay down his pen, forgetting the
word he was to write!
Mink felt a terrible pang of isolation. For the first time Alethea was
in his mind as an independent identity, subject to influences he could
scarcely gauge, perhaps harboring thoughts in which he had no share. Her
love for him had hitherto served for him as an expression of her whole
nature. He had never recognized other possibilities. Even her continual
pleas that he should take heed of the error of his ways he had esteemed
as evidence of her absorption in him, her eager, earnest aspiration for
his best good; she would endure his displeasure rather than forego aught
that might inure to his welfare. He had felt no gratitude that she had
come to rescue him, as she had often done, never so sorely needed as now;
it had seemed to him natural that she should bestir herself, since she
loved him so. The first doubt of the permanence and pervasiveness of this
paramount affection stirred within him. He wondered if she had noticed
the man’s look, if she were flattered by it. He sought to reassure
himself. “Lethe jes’ bogues along, though, seein’ nuthin’, studyin’ ’bout
suthin’ else; mebbe she never noticed. But ef Mis’ Purvine hed been hyar,
or Mis’ Sayles, I be bound, they’d hev seen it, an’ tole her, too, else
they ain’t the wimmen I take ’em fur.” He marveled whether Gwinnan had
thought she was pretty. He himself had always accounted her a fairly
“good-lookin’ gal,” but no better favored than Elvira Crosby.
He had had no fear of the result of the case since he had known of
Alethea’s strange glimpse of Tad; he was, too, in a moral sense,
infinitely relieved by the circumstance. Otherwise he might not have
been able to entertain a train of thought so irrelevant to the testimony
which was being given by the witnesses for the State. He heard it only
casually, although he now and then languidly joined the general smile
that rewarded some happy hit of Harshaw’s. These pleasantries were
chiefly elicited in cross-examining the witnesses for the State, and in
wrangles with the attorney-general as to the admissibility of evidence.
Kenbigh, with a determination of purple wrath to his bald head, would
in his stentorian roar call aloud upon his authorities with a reverent
faith as if they were calendared saints. More than once the court ruled
against him, when it seemed appropriate in his next remark to drop his
voice to a rumbling basso profundo. He maintained due respect for the
judge and showed a positive affection for the jury, but the very sight
of Harshaw would excite him to an almost bovine expression of rage,—the
florid counsel being like a red rag to a bull. At first the only point
which Harshaw seemed desirous to make was that none of the witnesses had
attached any importance to Mink’s threats, the afternoon of the shooting
match, to “bust down the mill,” until they heard of the disaster. He
tried, too, to induce them to admit that Mink was a good fellow in the
main. The tragic results, however, of his late mischief had given a new
and serious interpretation to all his previous pranks, and the witnesses
were more likely to furnish supplemental instances of freakish malice and
the mischievous ingenuity of his intentional reprisals than to palliate
his jocose capers. One old man, a by-stander at the shooting match, was
especially emphatic, even venomous. Harshaw involved him in a sketch of
what he considered a young man should be. When asked where he had ever
known such a man he naively confessed,—himself, “whenst I war young.”
Harshaw found it much safer to take the aggressive. He played upon the
alternating fears which Mink’s comrades entertained of the revenuers and
the moonshiners. He seemed to question rather _pro forma_ than with the
expectation of eliciting serious results, and to amuse himself with the
involutions and contradictions in which he contrived to enmesh them, in
replying to his questions as to their sobriety that night in the woods,
what they had to drink, how much it required to make them drunk.
To the witness it was not a reassuring playfulness. Harshaw looked very
formidable as he sat, his chair tilted back on its hind legs, both hands
clasping the lapels of his coat. Whenever he made a point he smacked his
confident red lips.
“You were perfectly sober that night?”
The witness virtuously assented.
“And why shouldn’t you be,” said the crafty Harshaw, “when we all know
there is no still but the God-fearing bonded still in the whole country!
Look at the jury, and tell them that you were not drinking that night.”
The unfortunate witness faltered that he _had_ been drinking some.
“You had!” exclaimed Harshaw, with the accents of surprise. “And yet you
say, on oath, that you were sober. Now what do you call sober? We must
inquire into this. What do you take? I wish I could put that question as
it should be between gentlemen, but”—he waved his fat hand—“some other
day.”
The witness stared dumbly at him, and the crowd grinned.
“Let me put the question in another form. How much of the reverend stuff
is enough to settle you? A pint?”
The witness gallantly declared that he could stand a pint.
“A jugful?”
“Oh, naw, sir,”—meaning a jugful would not be necessary.
In the staccato of affected amaze, “_Barrelful!_”
The badgered witness protested and explained, and Harshaw asked, lowering
his voice, as if it were exceedingly important, “Now, did that whiskey
taste like _brush_ whiskey?”
As the quaking, shock-headed country lout replied, the facetious counsel
recoiled.
“What! you tell this honorable court, and this intelligent jury, and this
upright and learned and teetotaling attorney for the State, that you
don’t know the difference in the taste between the illicit corn juice of
the mountains and the highly honorable, pure, rectified liquor, taxed
and stamped, made and drunk, under the auspices of this great, good, and
glorious government!”
The judge, who had watched Harshaw with a dilated, gleaming gray eye and
a quivering nostril, spoke abruptly.
“The court will not longer tolerate this buffoonery,” he drawled.
“Counsel may cross-examine witness, and if he has _nothing_ to say he may
be silent.”
Harshaw flushed deeply. He had always enjoyed certain privileges as a
wit. Judge Averill, who loved a joke for its own gladsome sake, had often
permitted him to transcend decorum. He had no idea, however, of figuring
as the butt of his own ridicule. He was a quick fellow, and took what
advantage was possible of the situation. “If it please your Honor,” he
said, rising to address the judge, and with an air of great courtesy,
“I will waive the right of cross-examination, since my methods fail in
satisfying the court.”
Gwinnan looked at him with thinly veiled antagonism. Harshaw relapsed
into his tilted chair, still lightly holding his lapels, that favorite
posture of rural gentlemen, listening with an air of polite but
incidental attention to the attorney-general’s examination of the next
witness, and declining with a wave of his fat hand to cross-examine.
A stir of excitement pervaded the bar; great interest was aroused in
the audience. An old farmer, sitting on one of the benches, holding one
treasured knee in both hands, put his foot on the floor to take care
of itself, and leaned forward in breathless eagerness to lose no word.
Others, who had been less attentive, were nudging one another, and asking
what had been said. Again and again, as the successive witnesses were
turned over to the defense for cross-examination, and the lawyer waved
his pudgy hand, there was a suppressed sensation. His freak of silence
had the effect of greatly expediting matters, and the attorney-general
announced before the adjournment for dinner that he had no more witnesses
to call.
In conducting the examination of the defendant’s witnesses Harshaw
was extremely grave. He had an excited gleam in his eye, a flurried,
precipitate manner, as he went on. Now and then he nodded his head, and
tossed back his mane of yellow hair as if it were heavy and harassed him.
He still sat in the big, important posture he liked to assume, but every
glance was full of an acute anxiety.
Mink strove again to fix his mind on the testimony. Over and over it
wandered. He only knew vaguely that his best friends were assuring the
jury that his escapades were all in mirth and naught in malice, and
instancing as indications of his deeper nature all the good turns he had
ever done. He was a loose-handed fellow. He had no thrifty instincts, and
perhaps because he valued lightly he gave freely. But the habit, such as
it might be, was displayed to the jury under the guise of generosity.
The sunlight now slanting upon the walls had turned to a deep golden-red
hue, for the early sunset was close at hand. Through a western window
one might see the great vermilion sphere, begirt with a horizontal band
of gray cloud, and sinking down into the dun-colored uncertainties about
the horizon. The yellow hickory-tree beside the window showed through
its thinning leaves the graceful symmetry of its black boughs. The room
was dropping into a mellow duskiness, hardly obscurity, for as yet the
soft light was sufficient to make all objects distinct in the midst of
the gathering shadow,—the lawyers, the prisoner, the tousled heads of the
audience, the attentive jury, the unwearied judge. Harshaw could even
read his own handwriting as he looked at the list he held, and said, “Mr.
Sheriff, call Alethea Sayles.”
“Alethea Sayles,” roared Mr. Sheriff at the door, as if Alethea Sayles
were “beyond the seas” and hard of hearing besides, instead of waiting
expectantly in the adjoining room, ten steps away.
As she came in, Mink was quick to notice the interest on Gwinnan’s
face,—a sort of grave curiosity without any element of disrespect. She
had a look in her eyes which Mink had often seen before, and which at
once rebuked and angered him,—an expression of spiritual earnestness,
of luminous purity; he had sneered at it as “trying to look pious.” She
sat down in the witness-chair, and pushed back from her forehead her
long bonnet; under its brown rim her golden hair showed in lustrous
waves. Her saffron kerchief was knotted beneath her round chin. Her
face was slightly flushed with the excitement of the moment, but she
was not flurried, nor embarrassed, nor restless, nor uncouth, as many
of her predecessors had been. Her deliberate, serious manner gave her
an air of great value, and as she began to reply to the questions, her
clear-voiced, soft drawl pervaded the court-room, singularly silent
now, and there was a growing impression that hers was the important
testimony for which all had been waiting. Harshaw’s manner served to
confirm this. He was repressed, grave; only the quick, nervous glance of
his opaque blue eye indicated his excitement; his questions were framed
with the greatest care, and some of these were strange enough to excite
comment. He asked her first to tell all that she knew about the party in
the woods that night,—whether they were drinking and had access to any
ample supply of liquor. She recited her adventure at Boke’s barn, and
detailed the subsequent interview with the moonshiner and her refusal
to keep his secret, throughout scarcely suppressed excitement in the
court-room, for every man knew that with the words she courted martyrdom
and took her life in her hands. Harshaw seemed to prize this attestation
of her courage and her high sense of the sacred obligations of her oath,
and dexterously contrived it so that the judge and the jury should be
fully impressed with the crystalline purity of her moral sense, with her
immovable determination to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth. He persevered in the examination of this point with great
pertinacity, despite many stormy wrangles with the attorney for the
State as to the pertinence and admissibility of the evidence, and the
occasional ruling of the judge against him. Enough was secured, however,
to prove that despite the limitations of the bonded still, Mink had had
the opportunity to get drunk if he chose, and his habits were not those
of a teetotaler.
The lawyer’s questions then became more inexplicable.
“When you discovered that you could give some testimony in this case,
what did you do?”
Alethea pushed back her bonnet still further, and stared at him.
“Why, you-uns know,” she said.
“Tell the jury.”
Like many rural witnesses, she persisted in addressing the judge. She
would fix her serious brown eyes on the stolid wooden faces in the
jury-box, then lift them to the judge and answer.
“I kem down ter the jail ter see Reuben, an’ tell him.”
“And did you see him?”
She looked at Harshaw, with a deep humiliation and resentment
intensifying the flush on her delicate cheek to a burning crimson. His
gravity, the respect of his manner, reassured her. She replied with her
deliberate dignity,——
“You-uns know mighty well he wouldn’t see me.”
“Then what did you do?”
She seemed for a moment doubtful if she would answer.
“I dunno how ye hev forgot,” she said slowly. “_I_ hain’t.”
“I want you to tell the jury,” he explained.
“I tried to make you listen.”
“And what did I do?”
Once more she pushed her brown bonnet further from her golden head, and
looked at him silently.
The pause was so long that the attorney-general remarked that really he
could not see the pertinence of the examination.
The judge spoke presently: “Counsel would do well not to harass the
witness with unnecessary questions.”
What new life was in the man’s tones! He had forgotten to drawl. There
had been many a badgered witness on the stand to-day whom he had not
interfered to protect. Mink eyed him narrowly through the closing dusk.
He was leaning forward upon the desk. He was listening with no impartial
judicial interest. A personal concern was expressed in his face.
The sympathetic cadence in his voice struck on other ears than Mink’s.
It was like an open sesame to Alethea’s heart. The pent-up indignation
burst forth. She was all at once eager to tell the affronts she could
not resent. “He wouldn’t listen ter me, jedge!” she cried. “He ran from
me,—actially ran down the street. An’ I didn’t know what ter do. An’
nobody knowed ’bout ’n it but me. An’ I dassent tell nobody ’ceptin’ the
lawyer. An’ Jerry Price,—him ez air on the jury,—he ’lowed ef I knowed
suthin’ I wanted ter tell in court, he’d _make_ the lawyer listen, an’ so
he did. An’ I tole him.”
“When was that?” asked Harshaw.
“Yestiddy mornin’.”
“So that was the reason you didn’t tell it before?”
“I war feared ter tell ennybody but the lawyer, ’kase Reuben’s enemies
mought fix it somehows so ’twouldn’t be no ’count.”
“Well, what was this you wanted to tell?”
Her face was growing dim among the glooms. The dusky figures within the
bar, the shadowy judge, the indistinct mass of the crowd, the great
windows,—indefinite gray squares,—seemed for a moment the darker because
of a dull suffusion of yellow light in the halls, falling through the
doorways, and heralding the coming of the lamps.
“I wanted to tell that I seen Tad Simpkins arter they ’lowed he war
drownded.”
There was absolute silence for a moment; then, wild commotion. Men were
talking loudly to each other in the crowd. The lights came in with a
flare. Several of the jury requested to have the answer repeated. The
attorney-general began to ask a question, left off, and bent his head to
his notes. A sudden shrill, quaking voice pierced the tumult.
“I know it air a true word!” cried the old miller, clasping his hands.
“God would not deliver my soul ter hell. I fund him in my youth, but my
age air the age o’ the backslider. He would not desert me, though! An’ I
hev been gin ter do my good works o’ faith anew. I’ll find my boy. I’ll
make amends. I’ll”——
The sheriff’s insistence, “Silence in court!” had no coercion for him. He
began to sob and cry aloud, and to call the idiot’s name, and was finally
taken by the deputy and led out of the court-room, the officer promising
to come and let him know as soon as Alethea had disclosed the boy’s
whereabouts.
Mink glanced around him in triumph. His lip curved. A brilliant elation
shone in his eyes. He tossed back, with an arrogant gesture, his long,
red, curling hair, gilded by the lamplight to a brighter hue. He joyed
to see the discomfiture of his detractors, who had given their testimony
with all the gusto that appertains to stamping on a man, literally and
metaphorically, who is already down. He noted, too, the surprise and
pleasure in Ben Doaks’s eye, in Jerry Price’s freckled, ugly face, and,
strangely enough, Peter Rood looked transfigured. His surly scowl was
gone, as if it had never existed. His swarthy face was irradiated by his
great excited eyes. A flush dyed his cheek. His breath came in quick
gasps. He seemed inordinately relieved, delighted. What! because the
forlorn little idiot was not dead? Mink could not understand it. With
not even a surmise to explain the demonstration, he stared in suddenly
renewed gravity at his old enemy on the jury.
As soon as order was restored, Harshaw resumed his questions.
“Tell the jury when and where you saw him, and how you are sure it was
after he was reputed to be drowned.”
“’Kase ’twar on the Monday o’ the camp-meetin’ in Eskaqua Cove, an’ that
warn’t begun till arter the mill war busted down,” said Alethea.
She detailed the scene at the little school-house in her uncouth
phrasings, every syllable carrying conviction to her hearers. Her bonnet
had fallen quite back on her shoulders. Her face was delicately ethereal
in the lamplight,—so much of the sincerities of her nature it expressed,
so fine and true an intelligence, that, beautiful as it was, it was still
more spiritual. The strange story she had told was improbable. Looking
upon her face it was impossible to doubt it.
“That night, what did you do?”
“I let Buck an’ the rest o’ the fambly go by ter aunt Dely’s house, an’
whenst they war out o’ sight I called Tad, but he wouldn’t answer. An’
then I climbed over the fence, an’ sarched an’ sarched fur him. But I
couldn’t find him,—not in the house, nor under it, nare one. Then I went
on ter aunt Dely’s,—Mis’ Purvine’s,” she added, decorously, remembering
that her relative was a stickler for etiquette, and might not relish
the familiar appellation of kinship in a public assembly. “I never tole
nobody, ’kase I war feared ez whoever hed Tad a-hidin’ of him fur spite
agin Reuben would hear ’bout’n it, an’ take him so fur away ez we-uns
couldn’t never ketch him agin. I went back ter the school-house over an’
over, a-sarchin’ fur him, hopin’ he’d take a notion ter kem thar agin.
An’ at last I ’lowed I’d tell the lawyer.”
It had become very plain to the listeners that it was in the interests
of his client that Harshaw had permitted his own rude conduct to be made
public. The prosecution could not now reasonably demand why a hue and cry
had not been raised, and why the boy was not brought into court, as it
was very evident that because of the witness’s mistaken secrecy and the
lawyer’s purblind folly the facts had not become known to the defense
until the preceding day, when it was futile to search a place where the
fugitive had been glimpsed three months before.
The attorney-general, about to cross-examine the witness, cleared
his throat several times on a low key. He began with a deliberation
and caution which indicated that he considered her formidable to the
interests of the State. He sat with his side to the table,—the rural
lawyer seldom rises save to address the court,—with one elbow upon it,
and the other hand twirling his heavy gold watch-chain that festooned his
ample stomach. More than once he desisted in this operation, and passed
his hand soothingly over his bald head, as if he were encouraging his
ideas. He at once sought to show an interested motive in the testimony.
Was she a relation of the prisoner? Was she not interested in him? Was he
not her lover? Ah, he had been! And he was not now? And why?
Alethea’s simple and modest decorum in answering these questions abashed
the ridicule that the mere mention of the tender passion always excites
in a rural crowd. She only threw added light upon her character when she
replied:
“Reuben didn’t like folks ter argufy with him. I useter beg him not ter
play kyerds, an’ be so powerful gamesome, an’ drink whiskey, an’ git in
sech a many scrapes. An’ he ’lowed ’twarn’t my business. An’ I reckon
’twarn’t But it never ’peared-like ter me ez sech goin’s-on war right,
an’ I couldn’t holp sayin’ so. An’ so he ’lowed ez me an’ him couldn’t
agree, an’ thar war no use a-tryin’.”
Mink glanced up at Gwinnan to note the impression of this plain
statement. The judge was looking at _him_.
The attorney-general went on, hoping to find a discrepancy in her
testimony, yet hardly knowing how he had best approach it. The court-room
had relapsed into absolute silence. One could hear in the pauses the
slight movement of the branches of the trees without as the light wind
stirred. They were distinctly visible beside the windows, for the night
was fair. All the long upper sashes gave upon a sky of a fine, pure
azure, seeming more delicate for the dull yellow lamplight flooding
the room. The moon with an escort of clouds was riding splendidly up
toward the meridian; now and then they closed jealously about her, and
again through their parting ranks she looked out radiantly and royally
on her realms below. The frost touched the panes here and there with a
crystalline sparkle. The attorney-general fixed his eyes upon the moon as
he pondered; then, his fingers drumming lightly upon the table, he asked,
“It was at the little school-house on the road to Bethel camp-ground?”
“Yes, sir,” said Alethea.
“Were you ever there before?”
“A many a time,” said Alethea. “The folkses in Eskaqua Cove goes thar ter
preachin’.”
He glanced again absently at the moon, his fingers still drumming on the
table.
“It’s a church-house, then,” he said, adopting the vernacular, “as well
as a school-house?”
“Yes, sir,” assented the witness.
“Well, is this fence by which you were standing the fence around the
play-yard?”
“Naw, sir,” said Alethea, amazed at the idea of this civilized provision
for youthful sports. “The palin’s air round three sides o’ the house,
leavin’ out the side whar the door be, ter pertect the graves.”
The drumming fingers of the attorney-general were suddenly still. “It
is a graveyard, then?” he said, in a sepulchral undertone, overmastered
himself by the surprise.
“Yes, sir. Folks air buried thar. It’s a graveyard.”
There was a pause.
“There’s no place more appropriate for a boy in poor Tad’s predicament to
be!” cried the lawyer. “Look here,” squaring himself before the table and
placing his elbows upon it, “do you believe in ghosts?”
Harshaw had changed color; he had been fiercely biting his red lips and
stroking his yellow beard throughout these interrogatories, seeing their
drift more clearly, perhaps, than the prosecuting officer did. Now he
sprang to his feet, and insisted that the attorney for the State should
not be permitted to play upon the superstition of the witness. She had
seen no ghost. The court would not, he hoped, permit the questions
to take the form of an attempt to persuade a witness—of great native
intelligence, indeed, and of the highest moral worth, but densely
ignorant, and doubtless saturated with the ridiculous superstitions
of the uneducated—that in seeing this fugitive lad she had beheld a
supernatural manifestation. “In one moment, sir,” he interpolated,
addressing Peter Rood, who sat in the back row of the jury, and who had
suddenly bent forward, pointing a long finger at the witness, as if he
were about to ask a question. “The boy doubtless swam out of the river,
and being a maltreated little drudge ran away, and is now somewhere held
in hiding by persons inimical to the prisoner. The witness had a glimpse
of him. There is no man here ignorant enough to believe that she saw a
ghost,—least of all the learned and astute counsel for the State.”
“I don’t believe she saw a ghost,” said the attorney-general, still
seated, cocking up his eyes at his vehement opponent. “I do believe,
however, most firmly, that the witness had an illusion, hallucination.”
There was a stir in the audience and the jury as he uttered these big
words. They seemed to represent something more vaguely formidable than a
ghost.
“Counsel must conduct the examination on a reasonable basis,” remarked
the judge.
“I will do so, your Honor,” in the basso profundo of deep respect.
Mink, agitated, trembling with the sudden shock, leaned forward and
looked with burning eyes at Alethea. How was she discrediting the
testimony she had given for him? How was she jeopardizing his fate?
She was almost overcome for a moment. Her nerves were shaken; she was
appalled by the sudden revolution her simple disclosure had wrought.
Her lips trembled, her eyes filled, but she made a gallant struggle for
self-control, and answered in a steady voice the attorney-general’s next
question.
“Did the boy wear a hat, or was he bare-headed?”
There was suppressed excitement in the audience, for Tad’s hat and coat,
recovered from the river, had been shown to the jury while she was in the
ante-room with the other witnesses.
“I didn’t notice,—’twar so suddint”
“How was he dressed?”
“I didn’t see,” faltered Alethea.
“What _did_ you see?”
“I seen his face, ez clear ez I see yourn this minit.”
“How did he look,—hearty?”
“Naw, sir; he looked mighty peaked. His face war bleached,”—a thrill ran
through the crowd,—“an’ I reckon he war skeered ez he seen me, fur he
’peared plumb tarrified.”
“How long did you see his face?”
“A minit, mebbe; the fog passed ’twixt us.”
“Ah, there was fog!”
The attorney-general cast a triumphant sidelong glance at the jury.
He paused abruptly, and turned toward them.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said, addressing Peter Rood. “I had quite
forgotten you wanted to ask a question.”
It did not immediately strike him as odd that the man was still in the
same position,—in the shadow, leaning forward, supported on the back
of the chair of the juryman in front of him, and still pointing at the
witness with a long finger.
The judge took note of the lapse of time. “Mr. Sheriff,” he said,
irritably, “wake that juror up. The man’s asleep.”
There was a stir in the jury-box among the attentive eleven men. The
juror on whose chair the immovable figure leaned turned his head, and met
the fixed gaze of the eyes so close to his own.
He sprang up with a loud cry.
“The man is dead!” he shrieked.