Hand and Ring

by Anna Katharine Green

And raising his voice till it filled the room like a clarion, Mr. Orcutt said:

"The moment is too serious for wrangling. A spectacle, the most terrible that can be presented to the eyes of man, is before you. A young, beautiful, and hitherto honored woman, caught in the jaws of a cruel fate and urged on by the emotions of her sex, which turn ever toward self-sacrifice, has, in a moment of mistaken zeal or frantic terror, allowed herself to utter words which sound like a criminal confession. May it please your Honor and Gentlemen of the Jury, this is an act to awaken compassion in the breast of every true man. Neither my client nor myself can regard it in any other light. Though his case were ten times more critical than it is, and condemnation awaited him at your hands instead of a triumphant acquittal, he is not the man I believe him, if he would consent to accept a deliverance founded upon utterances so manifestly frenzied and devoid of truth. I therefore repeat the objection I have before urged. I ask your Honor now to strike out all this testimony as irrelevant in rebuttal, and I beg our learned friend to close an examination as unprofitable to his own cause as to mine."

"I agree with my friend," returned Mr. Ferris, "that the moment is one unfit for controversy. If it please the Court, therefore, I will withdraw the witness, though by so doing I am forced to yield all hope of eliciting the important fact I had relied upon to rebut the defence."

And obedient to the bow of acquiescence he received from the Judge, the District Attorney turned to Miss Dare and considerately requested her to leave the stand.

But she, roused by the sound of her name perhaps, looked up, and meeting the eye of the Judge, said:

"Pardon me, your Honor, but I do not desire to leave the stand till I have made clear to all who hear me that it is I, not the prisoner, who am responsible for Mrs. Clemmens' death. The agony which I have been forced to undergo in giving testimony against him, has earned me the right to say the words that prove his innocence and my own guilt."

"But," said the Judge, "we do not consider you in any condition to give testimony in court to-day, even against yourself. If what you say is true, you shall have ample opportunities hereafter to confirm and establish your statements, for you must know, Miss Dare, that no confession of this nature will be considered sufficient without testimony corroborative of its truth."

"But, your Honor," she returned, with a dreadful calmness, "I have corroborative testimony." And amid the startled looks of all present, she raised her hand and pointed with steady forefinger at the astounded and by-no-means gratified Hickory. "Let that man be recalled," she cried, "and asked to repeat the conversation he had with a young servant-girl called Roxana, in Professor Darling's observatory some ten weeks ago."

The suddenness of her action, the calm assurance with which it was made, together with the intention it evinced of summoning actual evidence to substantiate her confession, almost took away the breath of the assembled multitude. Even Mr. Orcutt seemed shaken by it, and stood looking from the outstretched hand of this woman he so adored, to the abashed countenance of the rough detective, with a wonder that for the first time betrayed the presence of alarm. Indeed, to him as to others, the moment was fuller of horror than when she made her first self-accusation, for what at that time partook of the vagueness of a dream, seemed to be acquiring the substance of an awful reality.

Imogene alone remained unmoved. Still with her eyes fixed on Hickory, she continued: