Part 42 (1/2)

Judge Maxwell was tall and large of frame, from which the study and abstemiousness of his life had worn all superfluous flesh. His face, cleanly shaved, was expressive of the scholarly attainments which made his decisions a national standard. The judge's eyes were bushed over with great, gray brows, the one forbidding cast in his countenance; they looked out upon those who came for judgment before him through a pair of spring-clamp spectacles which seemed to ride precariously upon his large, bony nose. The gla.s.ses were tied to a slender black braid, which he wore looped about his neck.

His hair was long, iron-gray, and thick; he wore it brushed straight back from his brow, without a parting or a break. It lay in place so smoothly and persistently through all the labor of his long days, that strangers were sometimes misled into the belief that it was not his own.

This peculiar fas.h.i.+on of dressing his hair, taken with the length and leanness of his jaw, gave the judge a cast of aquiline severeness which his gray eyes belied when they beamed over the tops of his gla.s.ses at floundering young counsel or timid witness.

Yet they could shoot darts of fire, as many a rash lawyer who had fallen under their censure could bear witness. At such moments the judge had a peculiar habit of drawing up his long back and seemingly to distend himself with all the dignity which his c.u.mulative years and honors had endured, and of bowing his neck to make the focus of his eyes more direct as he peered above his rimless gla.s.ses. He did not find it necessary to reprimand an attorney often, never more than once, but these occasions never were forgotten. In his twenty-five years' service on the bench, he never had been reversed.

Joe felt a revival of hope again under the influence of these preparations for the trial. Perhaps Alice was there, somewhere among the people back in the room, he thought. And the colonel, also, and maybe Morgan. Who could tell? There was no use in abandoning hope when he was just where he could see a little daylight.

Joe sat up again, and lifted his head with new confidence. His mother sat beside him, watching everything with a sharpness which seemed especially bent on seeing that Joe was given all his rights, and that nothing was omitted nor slighted that might count in his favor.

She watched Hammer, and Captain Taylor; she measured Sam Lucas, the prosecutor, and she weighed the judge. When Hammer did something that pleased her, she nodded; when the prosecutor interposed, or seemed to be blocking the progress of the case, she shook her head in severe censure.

And now Joe came in for his first taste of the musty and ancient savor of the law. He had hoped that morning to walk away free at evening, or at least to have met the worst that was to come, chancing it that Morgan failed to appear and give him a hand. But he saw the hours waste away with the most exasperating fiddling, fussing and scratching over unprofitable straw.

What Hammer desired in a juryman, the prosecuting attorney was hotly against, and what pleased the state's attorney seemed to give Hammer a spasmodic chill. Instead of selecting twelve intelligent men, the most intelligent of the sixty empaneled, both Hammer and the prosecutor seemed determined to choose the most dense.

That day's sweating labor resulted in the selection of four jurymen.

Hammer seemed cheered. He said he had expected to exhaust the panel and get no more than two, at the best. Now it seemed as if they might secure the full complement without drawing another panel, and that would save them at least four days. That must have been an exceedingly lucky haul of empty heads, indeed.

Joe could not see any reason for elation. The prospect of freedom--or the worst--had withdrawn so far that there was not even a pin-point of daylight in the gloom. Alice had not shown her face. If she had come at all, she had withheld herself from his hungry eyes. His heart was as bleak that night as the mind of the densest juryman agreed upon between Hammer and the attorney for the state.

Next day, to the surprise of everybody, the jury was completed. And then there followed, on the succeeding morning, a recital by the prosecuting attorney of what he proposed and expected to prove in substantiation of the charge that Joe Newbolt had shot and killed Isom Chase; and Hammer's no shorter statement of what he was prepared to show to the contrary.

Owing to the unprecedented interest, and the large number of people who had driven in from the country, Judge Maxwell unbent from his hard conditions on that day. He instructed Captain Taylor to admit spectators to standing-room along the walls, but to keep the aisles between the benches clear.

This concession provided for at least a hundred more onlookers and listeners, who stood forgetful of any ache in their shanks throughout the long and dragging proceedings well satisfied, believing that the coming sensations would repay them for any pangs of inconvenience they might suffer.

It was on the afternoon of the third day of the trial that Sol Greening, first witness for the state, was called.

Sol retailed again, in his gossipy way, and with immense enjoyment of his importance, the story of the tragedy as he had related it at the inquest. Sam Lucas gave him all the rope he wanted, even led him into greater excursions than Sol had planned. Round-about excursions, to be sure, and inconsequential in effect, but they all led back to the tragic picture of Joe Newbolt standing beside the dead body of Isom Chase, his hat in his hand, as if he had been interrupted on the point of escape.

Sol seemed a wonderfully acute man for the recollection of details, but there was one thing that had escaped his memory. He said he did not remember whether, when he knocked on the kitchen door, anybody told him to come in or not. He was of the opinion, to the best of his knowledge and belief--the words being supplied by the prosecutor--that he just knocked, and stood there blowing a second or two, like a horse that had been put to a hard run, and then went in without being bidden. Sol believed that was the way of it; he had no recollection of anybody telling him to come in.

When it came Hammer's turn to question the witness, he rose with an air of patronizing a.s.surance. He called Sol by his first name, in easy familiarity, although he never had spoken to him before that day. He proceeded as if he intended to establish himself in the man's confidence by gentle handling, and in that manner cause him to confound, refute and entangle himself by admissions made in grat.i.tude.

But Sol was a suspicious customer. He hesitated and he hummed, backed and sidled, and didn't know anything more than he had related. The bag of money which had been found with Isom's body had been introduced by the state for identification by Sol. Hammer took up the matter with a sudden turn toward sharpness and belligerency.

”You say that this is the same sack of money that was there on the floor with Isom Chase's body when you entered the room?” he asked.

”That's it,” nodded Sol.

”Tell this jury how you know it's the same one!” ordered Hammer, in stern voice.

”Well, I seen it,” said Sol.

”Oh, yes, you saw it. Well, did you go over to it and make a mark on it so you'd know it again?”

”No, I never done that,” admitted Sol.

”Don't you know the banks are full of little sacks of money like that?”