Part 18 (2/2)

”I remember his face distinctly; I should know his voice among a thousand.”

”Be careful; what you say may be put to the test. What you state in the court you must be able to prove.”

”I am ready to prove it.”

When the moment came for the identification of the prisoner, Millicent's eyes were bandaged; and twelve men filed into the room, among whom she was told was the man arrested for the crime. As she had made the a.s.sertion that his voice alone would betray the murderer to her, she was asked to listen to a sentence repeated in turn by each of these men.

Three of them had said the stipulated words, and the fourth was about to speak, when those who were nearest to Millicent noticed that she shuddered violently.

”Let the next man speak.”

The fellow looked at Millicent askance, and then repeated the sentence in a low, unnatural voice. He had said but three words when she interrupted him.

”The person who is now speaking is the man who a.s.saulted me at Carey's Bridge.”

The judge, who had taken a keen interest in all Millicent had said, now motioned to the men to change places. The bandage being removed, she glanced at the row of men and said,--

”He now stands at the end of the row nearest the window.”

Her expression, as she turned her eyes and looked in the face of Daniel Horton, was cold and set as that of one of the younger Fates. Aversion and horror were therein painted. As she spoke she pointed at the guilty wretch, who moved uneasily under her gaze, and dropped his bold eyes before the light in her gray orbs, as if their fire scorched him.

The preliminaries accomplished, all the partic.i.p.ants adjourned to the court-room, which was a bare apartment, very grimy, and sadly in need of paint and soapsuds. At one end was a slightly raised table, behind which the judge seated himself. He was a singular-looking man, and wore his hair long, in greasy ringlets falling as far as the coat-collar.

His stout person was adorned with a large amount of rather flashy jewelry, and a pink cravat was supplemented by a bunch of fuchsias worn in the b.u.t.ton-hole. The s.p.a.ce in front of the bench was railed in by an iron bal.u.s.trade painted green. At the long tables sat groups of men busily engaged in writing or in conversation. A policeman standing near the judge's desk, when the clamor in the court-room became unusually loud, pounded on the floor with his club, whereat the voices grew lower for a brief s.p.a.ce, and then the hubbub began again. Somebody seemed to be addressing the court, though Millicent thought that no one paid much attention to him. The entrance of the prosecuting council in the case of manslaughter soon to be called, with two of the chief witnesses, made some stir; and Millicent was conscious, as she took her place, that the eyes of all present were fixed upon her. She looked wonderingly about the dismal apartment, with its dirty wooden settles and bare floor, at the judge on the bench, and at the crowd of poorly dressed people in the seats behind her. Galbraith now entered the little pen, and, seating himself at the table, proceeded to look through some papers which his clerk handed to him, while the man who was haranguing the court continued his discourse, in which n.o.body seemed to take any interest.

Millicent had never been in court before. Her only experience of the abodes of justice had been the long afternoons pa.s.sed in the court-rooms of the Doge's palace, studying the frescoes and beautiful carvings of those famous apartments. She had always invested the precincts of justice with a vague majesty and splendor. A judge, in her imagination, was a stately man clothed in crimson and ermine, with grave, reverend features, majestic in mien, deliberate in speech. When Hal pointed out Judge Croley, as one of the most distinguished of American jurists, she was greatly astonished.

”Will he try the case in that dress?”

”Oh, yes; I heard Croley condemn a man to death in very much the same costume as that which he wears to-day. The cravat was a little brighter pink, I think; and I remember he wore carnations in his b.u.t.ton-hole. He said in a pleasant, nonchalant voice, very much the tone he would use in ordering his farmer to kill a pair of chickens, 'You are condemned to be taken to the San Bernardino prison, there to be hanged by the neck until you are dead, on the third day of May at twelve o'clock; and may G.o.d have mercy upon your soul!'”

Millicent shuddered as she heard the case called, and faltered for the first time in her desire to see justice done to the murderer of Ah Lam.

It is such a terrible responsibility, the taking of life; can man's law make it guiltless? The great question which all of modern thought has not yet solved, troubled the mind of the young woman, who could accept no judgment or creed on faith; she painfully and laboriously solved the problems of life by the force of her own reasoning.

”There is Pierson, the counsel for the defence,” whispered Hal, as a little man strutted up the aisle between the benches full of people, and entered the green-railed enclosure. He was perhaps the most grotesque-looking person Millicent had ever seen. His height could not have been above five feet; and this, with his small hands and feet, gave him an exceedingly effeminate appearance. His small round head was like a ball, on the surface of which little globular eyes and a beak-like nose had been very casually placed. These features did not seem at all a necessary part of the head, which resembled that of a parrot. Before he spoke he put his head on one side, in a bird-like fas.h.i.+on; and he occasionally shook himself, very much as a canary does when anything has ruffled its composure. Millicent had learned from Galbraith that this man was the most prominent criminal lawyer in California. As she looked at his high, narrow forehead and mean, pinched smile she thought that among all the malefactors in San Bernardino prison she had seen no face as bad as that of Pierson, the great criminal lawyer. The prisoner was now brought into the court. After stating his name, age, residence, and occupation, he was asked the question,--

”Are you guilty or not guilty of the wilful murder of Ah Lam at Carey's Bridge, on the afternoon of Wednesday, October 16?”

The noisy court-room had grown perfectly still; and the prisoner's low-spoken answer was heard in the farthest corner with perfect distinctness,--

”Not guilty.”

The counsel for the defence now stated that the prisoner acknowledged having been at Carey's Bridge on the day of the murder. He had there seen and spoken to Miss Almsford, but had fled at the approach of some gentlemen of the party. He admitted that he had a.s.saulted Miss Almsford, but pleaded that he had no intention of injuring her.

”What were you doing at the mill?”

”I come there to meet a man as I had 'gaged to.”

”What man was it?”

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