“My—how many bottles of this stuff I’ve drunk tonight. It’s a wonder I ain’t dead already. I don’t believe I could keep up only I’ve got to finish my story. But this cell begins to swim ‘round pretty lively; I guess it ain’t goin’ to take much to finish me. Think a little of that Scotch will just about do the job. I don’t care what anyone says, I’m goin’ to get just as drunk as I can. I sha’n’t live to see what they say in the newspapers and it won’t make any difference when I’m dead. I don’t know as I ought to eat anything; it might kind of keep it from actin’, but still I might as well. I guess the Scotch’ll do it all right anyway.
“Well, there ain’t very much more to tell, and I guess you’re glad. It’s been a tough night on you, poor feller. I hope no one’ll ever have to do it for you. But, say—you’ve done me lots of good! I don’t know how I’d put in the night, if you hadn’t come!
“Well—the last mornin’ they took me over to court, the room was jammed more’n ever before, and a big crowd was waitin’ outside. I heard the other lawyer say that the judge’s platform looked like a reception; anyhow it was full of ladies with perfectly grand clothes, and most of ‘em would hold their glasses up to look at me. The other lawyer didn’t say much in his first speech, only to tell how it was all done, and how they had proved that everything happened in Cook County, and what a high office the jury had.
“Then my lawyer talked for me. I didn’t really see how he could have done any better and the papers all said he done fine. Of course there wa’n’t much to say. I done it, and what more was there to it? And yet I s’pose a lawyer is educated so he can talk all right on either side. Well, my lawyer went on to make out that no one had seen it done, that the evidence was all circumstantial, and no one ever ought to be hung on circumstantial evidence. He went on to show how many mistakes had been made on circumstantial evidence, and he told about a lot of cases. He told the jury about one that I think happened in Vermont where two farmers was seen goin’ out in the field. They hadn’t been very good friends for a long time. Someone heard loud voices and knew they was fightin’. Finally one of ‘em never come back and afterwards some bones or somethin’ was found, that the doctors said was a farmer’s bones. Well, they tried that farmer and found him guilty, and hung him. And then years afterwards the other man come back. And he’d just wandered off in a crazy fit. And after a while another doctor found out that them bones was only sheep bones, and they’d hung an innocent man. He told a lot of stories of that kind, and some of the jury seemed to cry when he told ‘em, but I guess they was cryin’ for the Vermont man and not for me.
“After my lawyer got through the other lawyer had one more chance, and he was awful hard on me. He made out that I was the worst man that ever lived. He claimed that I had made up my mind to kill her long ago, just to get rid of her, and that I went ‘round to all the saloons that day and drank just to get up my nerve. Then he claimed that I took a bottle of whiskey home and drank it up and left the empty bottle on the table, and I took that just to nerve me up. He made more out of the brown paper than he did of anything else, and told how I burned all the rest of the evidence but had forgot to burn this, and how I’d gone into the kitchen and got the poker out of the stove and come back into the settin’-room and killed her, and then took it back; and how cold-blooded I was to take her, after I’d killed her, and go and dump her into that hole away out on the prairie, and how I’d run away, and how that proved I’d killed her, and then he compared me with all the murderers who ever lived since Cain, ‘most, and showed how all of ‘em was better’n I was, and told the jury that nobody in Chicago would be safe unless I was hung; and if they done their duty and hung me there wouldn’t be any more killin’ in Chicago after this. I can’t begin to tell you what all he said; but it was awful! Once in a while when it was too bad, my lawyer would interrupt, but the judge always decided against me and then the other lawyer went on worse’n before. The papers next day told how fast I changed color while he was talkin’, and what a great speech he made, and they all said he ought to be a judge because he was so fearless.
“It took the crowd some time to quiet down after he got through and then the judge asked the jury to stand up, and they stood up, and he read a lot of stuff to ‘em, tellin’ ‘em about the case. ‘Most all that he read was ‘gainst me. Sometimes I thought he was readin’ one on my side, and he told ‘em how sure they must be before they could convict, and then he’d wind up by sayin’ they must be sure it was done in Cook County. Of course there never was any doubt but what it all happened in Cook County. When the judge got through ‘twas most night, and he told the bailiff to take charge of the jury, so he took ‘em and the clothes and the brown paper with the blood out in the jury room, and they han’-cuffed me and took me back to my cell.
“I don’t believe I ever put in any night that was quite so hard on me—exceptin’ mebbe the night I done it—as that one when the jury was out. I guess ever’one thought they wouldn’t stay long. I couldn’t see that any of ‘em ever looked at me once as if they cared whether I lived or died. I don’t believe that they really thought I was a man like them; anyhow ever’-one thought they would sentence me to hang in just a few minutes. I s’posed myself that they’d be in before supper. My lawyer come over to the jail with me, because he knew how I felt. And anyhow he was ‘most as nervous as I was. After a while they brought me in my supper, and the lawyer went out to get his. Then the guard told me the jury had gone to supper, and he guessed there was some hitch about it, though ever’one thought the jury wouldn’t be out long. After a while the lawyer came back, and he stayed and talked to me until nine or ten o’clock, and the jury didn’t come in, so he went to see what was the matter, and come back and said he couldn’t find out anything, only that they hadn’t agreed.
“Well, he stayed till twelve o’clock, and then the judge went home, and we knew they wa’n’t goin’ to come in till mornin’. I couldn’t sleep that night, but walked back and forth in the cell a good bit of the time. You see it wa’n’t this cell. The one I had then was a little bigger. I’d lay down once in a while, and sometimes I’d smoke a cigar that the guard gave me. Anyhow I couldn’t really sleep, and was mighty glad when daylight come. In the mornin’, kind of early, I heard that jury had agreed and I knew that ‘twas bad for me. The best that could happen would be a disagreement. I hadn’t allowed myself to have much hope any of the time, but I knew that now it was all off.
“Still I waited and didn’t quite give up till they took me back to the courtroom. Then when ever’one had got their places the jury come in, lookin’ awful solemn, and the judge looked sober and fierce-like, and he said, ‘Gentlemen of the Jury, have you agreed on your verdict?’ And the foreman got up and said, ‘We have.’ Then the judge told the foreman to give the verdict to the clerk. He walked over to the row of chairs and the man at the end of the bottom row reached out his hand and gave the paper to him. The people in the room was still as death. Then the clerk read, ‘We, the jury, find the defendant guilty, and sentence him to death.’ I set with my head down, lookin’ at the paper; I expected it, and made up my mind not to move. Ever’one in the courtroom sort of give a sigh. I never looked up, and I don’t believe I moved. The papers next day said I was brazen and had no feelin’, even when the jury sentenced me to death.
“The judge was the first one to speak. He turned to the jury and thanked ‘em for their patriotism and devotion, and the great courage they’d shown by their verdict. He said they’d done their duty well and could now go back to their homes contented and happy. And he says: ‘Mr. Sheriff, remove the prisoner from the room.’ Of course, I hadn’t expected nothin’, and still I wa’n’t quite sure—the same as now, when I think mebbe the governor’ll change his mind. But when the verdict was read and they said it was death, somehow I felt kind of dazed. I don’t really remember their puttin’ the han’-cuffs on me, and takin’ me back to jail. I don’t remember the crowd in the courtroom, or much of anything until I was locked up again, and then my lawyer come and said he would make a motion for a new trial, and not to give up hope. My lawyer told me that the reason they was out so long was one man stuck out for sendin’ me to the penitentiary for life instead of hangin’ me. We found out that he used to be a switchman. I s’pose he knew what a hard life I had and wanted to make some allowances. The State’s Attorney said he’d been bribed, and the newspapers had lots to say about investigatin’ the case, but there wa’n’t nothin’ done about it. But I s’pose mebbe it had some effect on the next case.