"Yes, sir."
"And you knew that your chum's father was elected here to enforce the law, and that the guilty should be punished—all this you knew?"
"Yes, sir."
"And yet you did all that you did—all that you have told?"
"Yes, sir."
Well, then Major Abbott took another turn. He asked Mitch about the tree, whether it was a cherry tree or an oak tree, and Mitch didn't know. And he asked him how high up he was, and what the light was, and whether anybody passing couldn't see him in the tree; and how tall the woman was that put the pistol there, and how she was dressed; and where Temple Scott and Joe Rainey was when he first saw them, and if he knew Harold Carman, and what the names of the other people were who came out; and what he did the day before, and the week before, and the week after; and whether he didn't fight and whip Kit O'Brien, and everything you ever heard of from the time Mitch was a baby. It took all the afternoon. And when Mitch got off the witness stand he was kind of weak, and his pa went up to him and led him out, and then they locked up the jury to keep 'em from hearin' anything. And the case went over till the next morning.
And the next mornin' we was all down there as before. When court took up, Major Abbott and my pa and the judge went into the judge's room and nobody knew what was said, the same as before, and when they came out, Major Abbott said:
"Your honor, such unusual things have been done in this case that I am compelled to do some myself. I shall call the defendant to the witness stand." So he called Temple Scott and he went up and was questioned. He went on to say that Joe Rainey called him an awful name, and said, "I'll kill you, and I'll get my pistol." That Joe Rainey went in the house and came out and fired, and that he fired then, and that he saw Joe Rainey's pistol fall out of his hand right down by the porch somewheres; that then he gave himself up, and that's all he knew.
My pa cross-questioned him awful hard for about an hour, and asked him how he happened to have a pistol on him. He said he was afraid of Joe Rainey on account of the threats. And then my pa asked him why he didn't tell his story in the first place, and not wait till Mitch testified; and he said he didn't have to, the law didn't require him to. And so it went, and at last he got off the stand, and the case was closed. Then the speeches began. My pa talked calm like, reviewin' the evidence and so forth. And then Major Abbott got up and put a glass of water on the table and wiped his glasses off and said, "May it please your honor," and began.
He said it was a privilege to be here in the community that Lincoln had hallowed, and to stand in the very room he had stood in so many times, pleading for right and justice, and to plead for right and justice too. And that all his client wanted was justice; that he, as a defending lawyer, was as much sworn to support the law as the State's Attorney, and he wanted to see it enforced, and meant to have it enforced. And with the help of the court and the jury, it would be enforced; and his client who had been greatly wronged and barely escaped with his life would be freed, and could go back to his family, and be a respected member of the community.