“You understand the usages of courts, I conclude; and, if so, will now receive the oath, and go on to tell what you know relative to the crime for which, you have doubtless heard, the prisoner here is arraigned.”
At once raising her hand, she was sworn, and proceeded directly to state that part of the transaction she had witnessed on the lake, which the hunter, in the conversation she found means to have with him while waiting to be taken into court, had advised her was all that would be important as evidence in the case.
Gaut Gurley, the alarmed prisoner, who at first had appeared greatly relieved on finding that the announced witness was not the reänimated young Elwood, as he had feared, now seemed utterly at fault to conjecture what either of these women could know of his crime. But the moment the maiden, whom he had seen the previous year, and regarded with jealous dislike, as the possible rival of his daughter, revealed herself to his view, his looks grew dark and suspicious; and when she commenced by mentioning, as she did at the outset, that she was on a boat excursion along the western shore of the Maguntic, on the well-remembered day when he consummated his long cherished atrocity, he seemed to comprehend the drift of what was coming, and his eyes fastened on her with the livid glare of a tiger; while those demoniac flashes, before noted as the usual precursor of hellish intent with him, began to burn up and play over his contracting countenance.
But these suspicious indications had escaped the notice of all,—even of the watchful hunter, whose looks, with those of the rest, were for the moment hanging, with intense interest, on the speaking lips of the fair witness. And she proceeded uninterrupted, till, having described the position in the thicket on shore, in which she was standing, as Mark Elwood, followed by Gaut Gurley, both of whom she recognized, came along, she, nerving herself for the task, raised her voice and said:
“I distinctly saw Mr. Elwood fall, convulsed in death,—heard the fatal shot, and instantly traced it to Gaut, before he had taken his smoking rifle from his shoulder,—this same man who now——”
When, as she was uttering the last words, and turning to the prisoner, she stopped short, recoiled, and uttered a loud shriek of terror. And, the next instant, the deafening report of a pistol burst from the corner where the prisoner was sitting, filling the room with smoke, and bringing every man to his feet, in the amazement and alarm that seized all at the sudden outbreak.
There was a dead pause for a moment; and then was heard the sudden rush of men, the sharp, brief struggle, and the heavy fall of the grappled prisoner, as he was borne overpowered to the floor.
“Thank God!” exclaimed the hunter, the first to reach the bewildered maiden, and ascertain what had befell from this fiendish attempt to take her life simply because she was instrumental in bringing a wretch to justice,—“thank God, she is unhurt! The bullet has only cut the dress on her side, and passed into the wall beyond.”
“Order in court!” sternly cried the head magistrate. “It is enough! Mr. Phillips, conduct these ladies to some more suitable apartment. We wish for no more proof. The prisoner’s guilt is already piled mountain-high. We commit him to your hands, Mr. Sheriff. Within one hour, let him be on his way to Lancaster jail, there to await his final trial and doom, for one of the foulest murders that ever blasted the character of human kind!”
We will not attempt to describe, in detail, the lively and bustling scene, which, for the next hour or two, now ensued in and around the tavern, that had lately been the unaccustomed theatre of so many new and startling developments. The running to and fro of the excited and jubilant throng of men, women, and children, who, in their anxiety to witness and know the result of the trial, had passed the whole night in the place,—the partaking of the hastily snatched breakfast, in the tavern, by some, or on logs or bunches of shingles in the yard, by others, from provisions brought along with them from home,—the hurried harnessing of horses and running out of wagons, preparatory to the departure of those here with the usual vehicles of travel,—the resounding blows and lumbering sounds of the score of lusty men who had volunteered to replace and repair the bridge from the old materials luckily thrown on the bank a short distance down the stream, so as to permit the departing teams, going in that direction, to pass safely over,—and, lastly, the bringing out, the placing on his bed of straw in the bottom of a wagon, and the moving off of the caged lion, with his cavalcade of guards before and behind,—the fiercely exultant hurrahing of the execrating crowd, as he disappeared up the road to the west, together with the crowning, extra loud and triumphant kuk-kuk-ke-o-ho! of Comical Codman, who had mounted a tall stump for the purpose, and made the preliminary declaration that, if he was ever to have another crow, it should be now, on seeing the Devil’s unaccountable and first cousin, to say the least, in relationship, so handsomely cornered, and, at last so securely put in limbo,—these, all these combined to form a scene as stirring to the view, as it was replete with moral picturesque to the mind. But we must content ourself with this meagre outline; another and a different, quickly succeeding scene in the shifting panorama, now demands our attention.