Among the last witnesses brought up was Julia Warren. Her determination not to give evidence, which had just escaped legal censure on the examination, had been reasoned away by her grandfather who, believing, himself that the laws should be obeyed in all things, leaving the result with God, had succeeded in convincing the mind of this young girl that her duty was obedience. She arose, therefore, when summoned to the stand, turned her eyes upon her grandfather, as if to gather courage from his strength, and moved forward tremulously, it is true, but with more fortitude than might have been expected in a creature so young and so delicately sensitive.
With her usual good sense, Mrs. Gray had taken care that her protégé should be neatly dressed, but spite of the little cottage bonnet with its rose-colored lining, that face was colorless as a snow-drop.
A thrill of sympathy passed through the crowd, as this young girl stood up in the public gaze. She was known as the grandchild of the accused, and to possess knowledge that could but deepen the charges against him. This of itself was enough to enlist the generous impulses of a people, more keenly alive than any on earth, to the claims and dependencies of womanhood. But the shrinking modesty of her demeanor—the exquisite purity of her loveliness—her youth, the innate refinement that breathed about her like an atmosphere, all conspired to make her an object of generous pity. There was not a face present, even to the officers, that did not exhibit some sign of this feeling when the first view of her features was obtained. The face in which this tender compassion beamed most eloquently was that of the old prisoner. For the first time that day tears came into his eyes, but when her glance was turned upon him with a look that pleaded for strength and for pardon, eloquently as eyes ever pleaded to a human soul, the grandfather answered it with a smile that kindled up her pale face, as if an angel had passed by, which no one had the power to see, save her and the old man.
She touched her lips to the sacred volume, and turned with a look of angelic obedience toward the judges. When the prosecuting attorney commenced his examination, she answered his questions with a degree of modest dignity that checked any desire he might have felt to excite or annoy her with useless interrogations. Nothing could be more absorbing than the attention paid to every word that dropped from her lips. She spoke low, and faltered a little now and then; but the tones of her voice were so sadly sweet, the tears seemed so close to her eyes without reaching them, that even the judges and the jury leaned forward to catch those tones, rather than break them by a request that she should speak louder.
CHAPTER XXXIV. THE TWO WITNESSES.
Woman, thy haughty pride shall fall—
Thy very soul shall quake and quail.
Those words are weaving shroud and pall,
And truth itself may not avail.