The utterance of these words sent a thrill through the court, and the judge was obliged to remind the prisoner that he was but endangering his own safety by these rash interruptions.
“Sure I know it, my Lord; sure I feel it,” cried he, sobbing; “but what help have I? Is there no one to stand by me? You're looking for marks of blood, ain't ye?” screamed he to the jury, who were now examining the coat and cap with great attention. “And there it is now,—there it is!” cried he, wildly, as his eyes detected a folded paper that one of the jurymen had just taken from the coat-pocket “What could I get by it?—sure the will could n't do me any harm.”
“This is a will, my Lord,” said the foreman, handing the document down to the bench. “It is dated, too, on the very-night before Mr. Godfrey's death.”
The judge quickly scanned the contents, and then passed it over to Mr. Hipsley, who, glancing his eyes over it, exclaimed, “If we wanted any further evidence to exculpate the memory of Mr. Dalton, it is here. By this will, signed, sealed, and witnessed in all form, Mr. Godfrey bequeathed to his brother-in-law his whole estate of Corrig-O'Neal, and, with the exception of some trifling legacies, names him heir to all he is possessed of.”
“Let me out of this,—leave me free!” shouted the prisoner, whose eyeballs now glared with the red glow of madness. “What brought me into your schemes and plots?—why did I ever come here? Oh, my Lord, don't see a poor man come to harm that has no friends. Bad luck to them here and hereafter, the same Daltons! It was ould Peter turned me out upon the world, and Godfrey was no better. Oh, my Lord! oh, gentlemen! if ye knew what druv me to it,—but I did n't do it,—I never said I did. I'll die innocent!”
These words were uttered with a wild volubility, and, when over, the prisoner crouched down in the dock, and buried his face in his hands. From that instant he never spoke a word. The trial was prolonged till late into the night; a commission was sworn and sent to the inn, to examine young Dalton and interrogate him on every point. All that skill and address could do were exerted by the counsel for the defence; but, as the case proceeded, the various facts only tended to strengthen and corroborate each other, and long before the jury retired their verdict was certain.
“Guilty, my Lord!” And, well known and anticipated as the words were, they were heard in all that solemn awe their terrible import conveys.
The words seemed to rouse the prisoner from his state; for, as if with a convulsive effort, he sprang to his legs, and advanced to the front of the dock. To the dreadful question of the Judge, as to what he had to say, why sentence of death should not be pronounced upon him, he made no answer; and his wild gaze and astonished features showed an almost unconsciousness of all around him. From this state of stupor he soon rallied, and, grasping the iron spikes with his hands, he protruded his head and shoulders over the dock, while he carried his eyes over the assembled crowd, till at last they lighted on the spot where Cahill and D'Esmonde were seated,—the former pale and anxious-looking, the latter with his head buried in his hands. The prisoner nodded with an insolent air of familiarity to the priest, and muttered a few broken words in Irish. Again was the terrible demand made by the Judge; and now the prisoner turned his face towards the bench, and stood as if reflecting on his reply.
“Go on,” cried he at last, in a tone of rude defiance; and the judge, in all the passionless dignity of his high station, calmly reviewed the evidence in the case, and gave his full concurrence to the verdict of the jury.
“I cannot conclude,” said he, solemnly, “without adverting to that extraordinary combination of events by which this crime, after a long lapse of years, has been brought home to its guilty author. The evidence you have heard to-day from Mr. Dalton—the singular corroboration of each particular stated by him in the very existence of the will, which so strongly refutes the motive alleged against the late Mr. Dalton—were all necessary links of the great chain of proof; and yet all these might have existed in vain were it not for another agency, too eventful to be called an accident; I allude to the circumstance by which this man became acquainted with one who was himself peculiarly interested in an fathoming the mystery of this murder; I mean the Abbé D'Esmonde. The name of this gentleman has been more than once alluded to in this trial; but he has not been brought before you, nor was there any need that he should be. Now the Abbé, so far from connecting the prisoner with the crime, believed him to be the agency by which it might have been fastened on others; and to this end he devoted himself with every zeal to the inquiry. Here, then, amidst all the remarkable coincidences of this case, we find the very strangest of all; for this same Abbé,—the accidental means of rescuing the prisoner from death at Venice, and who is the chief agent in now bringing him to punishment here,—this Abbé is himself the natural son of the late Mr. Godfrey. Sent when a mere boy to St. Omer and Louvain to be educated for the Roman Catholic priesthood, he was afterwards transferred to Salamanca, where he graduated, and took deacon's orders. Without any other clew to his parentage than the vague lines of admission in the conventual registry, the checks for money signed and forwarded by Mr. Godfrey, this gentleman had risen by his great talents to a high and conspicuous station before he addressed himself to the search after his family. I have no right to pursue this theme further; nor had I alluded to it at all, save as illustrating in so remarkable a manner that direct and unmistakable impress of the working of Providence in this case, showing how, amidst all the strange chaos of a time of revolution and anarchy, when governments were crumbling, and nations rending asunder, this one blood-spot—the foul deed of murder——should cry aloud for retribution, and, by a succession of the least likely incidents, bring the guilty man to justice.”