Gabriel (blushing to the roots of his hair, and conscience-stricken to his inmost soul): "It's jest passin' the time o' day, Olly, with old friends—kinder influencin' the public sentyment and the jury. Thet's all. It's the advice o' Lawyer Maxwell, ez ye didn't get to hear, I reckon,—thet's all!"
But Gabriel's experience in the Grand Conroy Hotel was not, I fear, always as pleasant. A dark-faced, large-featured woman, manifestly in mourning, and as manifestly an avenging friend of the luckless deceased, in whose taking off Gabriel was supposed to be so largely instrumental, presently appeared at the Grand Conroy Hotel, waiting the action of the Grand Jury. She was accompanied by a dark-faced elderly gentleman, our old friend Don Pedro—she being none other than the unstable-waisted Manuela of Pacific Street—and was, I believe, in the opinion of One Horse Gulch, supposed to be charged with convincing and mysterious evidence against Gabriel Conroy. The sallow-faced pair had a way of meeting in the corridors of the hotel and conversing in mysterious whispers in a tongue foreign to One Horse Gulch and to Olly, strongly suggestive of revenge and concealed stilettos, that was darkly significant! Happily, however, for Gabriel, he was presently relieved from their gloomy espionage by the interposition of a third party—Sal Clark. That individual, herself in the deepest mourning, and representing the deceased in his holiest affections, it is scarcely necessary to say at once resented the presence of the strangers. The two women glared at each other at the public table, and in a chance meeting in the corridor of the hotel.
"In the name of God, what have we here in this imbecile and forward creature, and why is this so and after this fashion?" asked Manuela of Don Pedro.
"Of a verity, I know not," replied Don Pedro, "it is most possibly a person visited of God!—a helpless being of brains. Peradventure, a person filled with aguardiente or the whisky of the Americans. Have a care, little one, thou smallest Manuela" (she weighed at least three hundred pounds), "that she does thee no harm!"
Meanwhile Miss Sarah Clark relieved herself to Mrs. Markle in quite as positive language. "Ef that black mulattar and that dried-up old furriner reckons they're going to monopolise public sentyment in this yer way they're mighty mistaken. Ef thar ever was a shameless piece et's thet old woman—and, goodness knows, the man's a poor critter enyway! Ef anybody's goin' to take the word of that woman under oath, et's mor'n Sal Clark would do—that's all! Who ez she—enyway? I never heard her name mentioned afore!"
And ridiculous as it may seem to the unprejudiced reader, this positive expression and conviction of Miss Clark, like all positive convictions, was not without its influence on the larger unimpanelled Grand Jury of One Horse Gulch, and, by reflection, at last on the impanelled jury itself.
"When you come to consider, gentlemen," said one of those dangerous characters—a sagacious, far-seeing juror—"when you come to consider that the principal witness o' the prosecution and the people at the inquest don't know this yer Greaser woman, and kinder throws off her testimony, and the prosecution don't seem to agree, it looks mighty queer. And I put it to you as far-minded men, if it ain't mighty queer? And this yer Sal Clark one of our own people."
An impression at once inimical to the new mistress and stranger, and favourable to the accused Gabriel, instantly took possession of One Horse Gulch.
Meanwhile the man who was largely responsible for this excitement and these conflicting opinions maintained a gravity and silence as indomitable and impassive as his alleged victim, then slumbering peacefully in the little cemetery on Round Hill. He conversed but little even with his counsel and friend, Lawyer Maxwell, and received with his usual submissiveness and gentle deprecatoriness the statement of that gentleman that Mr. Dumphy had already bespoken the services of one of the most prominent lawyers of San Francisco—Mr. Arthur Poinsett—to assist in the defence. When Maxwell added that Mr. Poinsett had expressed a wish to hold his first consultation with Gabriel privately, the latter replied with his usual simplicity, "I reckon I've nowt to say to him ez I hain't said to ye, but it's all right!"
"Then I'll expect you over to my office at eleven to-morrow?" asked Maxwell.