But from the Kentucky group, even from Dorothy herself, that circumstance wrung no murmur of resentment and the accused stood for a moment before he took his seat with eyes ranging over the place until they came to the section of the dingy room where he encountered the unscowling faces of friends.
There were his supporters who had come so far to raise their voices in his behalf, and perhaps to share the brunt of hatred that had been fired into blazing against him, and there—he felt a surge of emotion under which his face burned—was Dorothy herself!
They had not brought her to the jail to see him, and on the advice of Jim Rowlett she had not signalized her coming by insistence—so their eyes met without prior warning to the man.
It was to Kenneth Thornton as if there were sunlight in one corner of that cobwebbed room with its unwashed windows and its stale smells, and elsewhere hung the murk of little hope. A few staunch friends, at least, he had, but they were friends among enemies, and he steeled himself for facing the stronger forces.
Back of the rostrum where the judge sat squalidly enthroned a line of dusty and cobwebbed volumes tilted tipsily in ironical reminder of the fact that this law-giver took his cue less from their ancient principles than from whispers alien to their spirit.
A shuffling of muddy feet ensued; then a lesser sound that came with the giving out of many breaths; a sound that has no name but which has been known since days when men and women settled back in the circus of the Cæsars and waited for the lions to be turned into the arena where the victims waited.
From the bench was drawled the routine query, "Has the Commonwealth any motions?" and the Commonwealth's attorney rose to his feet and straightened the papers on his desk.
"May it please your Honour," he said, slowly, "in the case of the Commonwealth against Kenneth Thornton, charged with murder, now pending on this docket, I wish to enter a motion of dismissal and to ask that your Honour exonerate the bond of the defendant."
The man in the prisoner's dock had come braced against nerve-trying, but now he bent forward in an amazement that he could not conceal, and from the back of the courtroom forward ran an inarticulate sound from human throats that needed no words to voice its incredulity—its disappointment.
There was a light rapping of the gavel and the state's representative went evenly on: