The sheriff waited to hear no more, but hastily retreated into the house, followed by a shout of derisive laughter; and his place was the next moment occupied by Chandler, who bustled forward to the steps, and, in a flustered, supplicatory manner, asked leave to address his “respected fellow-citizens.”
“Short speeches, judge!” impatiently cried Colonel Carpenter, who seemed, from his position on horseback among the troops and other appearances, to be chief in command—“short speeches, if any. We have come here on a business which neither long speeches nor smooth ones will prevent us from executing.”
The judge, however, could not afford to take this as a repulse; and, with this doubtful license, he went on to say, that on hearing, in the morning, as he did with astonishment and horror, of the unauthorized proceedings of last night, he had denounced the outrage, in an address at the opening of the court; and not finding himself supported, he had resigned, and left his seat on the bench.
“And now,” he added in conclusion, “being freed from the trammels of my oath of office, which have lately become so painful to me, I feel myself again one of the people, and stand ready to cooperate with them in any measure required by the public welfare.”
A very faint and scattering shout of applause, in two or three places, mingled with hisses and murmurs in others, was the only response with which this address was received. But even with this equivocal testimony of public feeling towards him, this despicable functionary felt gratified. “I am safe,” said he to himself, with a long-drawn breath, as he descended the steps, to watch an opportunity to mingle with the party with whom he was now especially anxious to be seen, and to whom he was ready to say, in the words of the satirist,—
“I'm all submission, what you'd have me, make me;
The only question is, sirs, will you take me?”
At this moment a sash was thrown up, and the prisoner, Herriot, appeared at a window of the court-room above.
“I have been brought up here this morning,” he said, shaking back his gray locks, and raising his stern, solemn voice to a pitch clearly audible to all in the grounds below—“I have been brought here from my dungeon to answer to the charge of a foul crime; and both my accusers and triers, fleeing even before any one appeared to pursue, have left their places, having neither tried nor condemned me. But scorning to follow their example, I now appear, to submit myself for a verdict, to the rightful source of all power—the people.”
“Neither will we condemn thee,” cried Knowlton, pursuing the scriptural thought of the other; “if thy accusers and judges have left thee uncondemned, thou shalt not be condemned by us; at least not by me, who have long had my opinions of the character of this prosecution.”
“As also have I,” responded Captain Wright. “I know something of the witnesses, on whom, it is said, they depended to convict father Herriot; and I would not hang a dog on their testimony. I move, therefore, that we here pronounce a verdict of acquittal. Who says, ay?”