The judge took note of the lapse of time. “Mr. Sheriff,” he said, irritably, “wake that juror up. The man’s asleep.”
There was a stir in the jury-box among the attentive eleven men. The juror on whose chair the immovable figure leaned turned his head, and met the fixed gaze of the eyes so close to his own.
He sprang up with a loud cry.
“The man is dead!” he shrieked.
XII.
The finger of the dead man still pointed at Alethea. His ghastly eyes were fixed upon her. The chair of the juryman in front of him had sustained his weight in the same position in which he had fallen when the first shock of the idea that the witness had seen a spectre instead of the boy, alive and well, had thrilled through the room.
For a few moments it was a scene of strange confusion. The crowd rose from their seats, and surged up to the bar. New-comers were rushing in from the halls. Some one was calling aloud the name of the principal physician of the place. Many were clamoring to know what had happened. The judge’s voice sounded suddenly. “Look out for your prisoner, Mr. Sheriff!” he exclaimed sharply; for the officer still stood as if transfixed beside the dead man, on whose shoulder he had laid hold. No hand, however heavy, could rouse him from the slumber into which he had fallen.
The sheriff turned toward the prisoner. The proud mountaineer, keenly sensitive to an indignity, burst out angry and aggrieved. “I hain’t budged a paig!” he cried. And indeed he had not moved. “It’s jes’ ’kase you-uns set thar in jedgmint, an’ I hev ter set hyar an’ be tried, ez ye kin say sech ez that ter me!”
Harshaw had vehemently clutched his client’s arm as a warning to be silent. To his relief, he perceived that Gwinnan had not heard. He was absorbed in directing a physician to be called, and formally adjourned court until nine o’clock the following morning. The reluctant jurymen, quivering with excitement and consumed with curiosity as to the subsequent proceedings, were led off from the scene in charge of an officer,—himself a martyr to duty,—with many an eager backward glance and thought. The crowd hung around outside with unabated excitement. Often it effected an entrance and surged through the doors, to be turned out again by the orders of the physicians. Many climbed on the window-ledges to look through. The lower branches of the hickory-trees swarmed with the figures of nimble boys. The wind now was high. The boughs swayed back and forth with a monotonous clashing. Leaves continually fell from them like the noiseless flight of birds. The moon showed the pale, passionless sky; a planet swung above the distant mountains, burning with the steadfast purity of vestal fires; the inequalities of the hills and dales on which the rugged little town was built—very dark beneath the delicately illumined heavens—showed in the undulating lines of lighted windows, glimmering points stretching out into the gloom. Constantly the weighted gate clanged as men trooped into the court-house yard. The shadows seemed to multiply the number of the crowd.