As soon as the judge heard that Rachel's beauty had something to do with the case in hand he fell back into his official reserve, as though he felt a scruple that to talk about her, or even to take note of her beauty, might be, in some sort, a receiving of evidence not properly before the court.
The jury was very soon impaneled, for in that day entire ignorance of the matter in hand was not thought indispensable to a wise decision. Lincoln made no objection to any of the names drawn for jurymen except that of Abijah Grimes, of Broad Run Township. The exclusion of Bijy's open countenance from the jury box was another blow to Jake Hogan's faith in the institutions of the land. His brow visibly darkened; here was one more sign that a rich man's nephew could not be punished, and that a poor man hadn't no kind uv a chance in sech a dodrotted country. No time was spent in an opening speech; the preliminary oratory, by which our metropolitan barristers consume the time of an indulgent court and make a show of earning their preposterous fees, was rarely indulged in that simpler land and time. The fees paid, indeed, would not have justified the making of two speeches.
No portion of the crowd tucked into the four walls of the Moscow court-house showed more interest in the trial than the members of the bar. The unsolved mystery that hung about Lincoln's line of defense, the absence of any witnesses in Tom's behalf, the neglect of all the ordinary precautions, such as the seeking of a change of venue, produced a kind of flurry of expectation inside of the bar; and the lawyers in their blue sparrow-tail coats with brass buttons, which constituted then a kind of professional uniform, moved about with as much animation as uneasy jay-birds, to which the general effect of their costume gave them a sort of family likeness. Their attention was divided, it is true; for when a member of the bar did succeed in settling himself into a chair, which he always canted back on its hind legs, he was pretty sure to get into a position that would enable him to get a glance now and then at the face of Rachel Albaugh, who was interesting, not only for her beauty, but on account of her supposed relation to the case actually before the court. Never had Rachel's lustrous eyes seemed finer, never had her marvelous complexion shown a tint more delicious; her interest in the case lent animation to her expression, and her attitude of listening set off the graceful turn of her features.
The prosecuting attorney called Henry Miller to prove that Tom had been irritated with Lockwood at Albaugh's, but Henry did what he could for Tom, by insisting that it didn't "amount to anything" as a quarrel; it was "only a huff," he said. The next witness called was the nervous young man who had stood balancing himself on the threshold of Wooden & Snyder's store when Tom had threatened Lockwood, in paying back the money borrowed to discharge his gambling debt. He was a habitual gossip, and the story lost nothing from his telling. He did not forget to mention with evident pleasure that Rachel Albaugh's name had been used in that quarrel. At this point Rachel, finding too many eyes turned from the witness to the high seat at the back of the room, lowered her green veil.
Then the carpenter who had bought a three-cornered file on the morning of Tom's outburst against Lockwood also swore to the details of that affair as he remembered them, and the villager who had come in to buy nails to repair his garden fence gave a third version of the quarrel; but Snyder, the junior proprietor of the store, told the incident as it was colored by his partisanship for Lockwood and in a way the most damaging to Tom. He swore that Lockwood was really afraid of Tom, and that at Lockwood's suggestion he had himself got Blackman to speak to Tom's uncle about it. The young men followed who had heard Tom say, as he left town after his break with his uncle, that George Lockwood was the cause of all his troubles, and that Lockwood "had better not get in his way again, if he knew what was good for him."
Lincoln sat out that forenoon without making a note, without raising an objection, without asking the witnesses a question, and without a book or a scrap of paper before him. He did not break silence at all, except to waive the cross-examination of each witness. The impression made in Tom's favor by his voluntary appearance at the trial, when he might perhaps have got away, was by this time dissipated, and the tide set now overwhelmingly against him; and to this tide his self-contained lawyer had offered not the slightest opposition. It was a serious question even among the lawyers whether or not Lincoln had given up the case. But if he had given up the case, why did he not fight on every small point, as any other lawyer would have done, for the sake of making a show of zeal? To Allen, the public prosecutor, there was something annoying and ominous in Lincoln's silence; something that made him apprehensive of he knew not what.
When the court took its noon recess Barbara and her mother were in utter despondency. It seemed to them that Lincoln was letting the case go by default, while the prosecuting attorney was full of energetic activity.
"Abra'm," said Mrs. Grayson, intercepting Lincoln as he passed out of the bar with his hat drawn down over his anxious brows, "ain't ther' nothin' you kin do for Tom? Can't you show 'em that he never done it?"
"I'll do whatever I can, Aunt Marthy, but you must leave it to me." So saying, he quickly left her and pushed on out of the door, while his learned brethren gathered into a group within the bar, and unanimously agreed in condemning his neglect of every opportunity to break the force of the evidence against Tom. Why had he not objected to much of it, why had he not cross-questioned, why did he not ask for a change of venue yesterday?
When the sheriff and his deputy, at the close of this forenoon session, passed out of the court-house with Tom, there was a rush of people around and in front of them. Men and boys climbed up on wagons, tree stumps, and whatever afforded them a good view of the criminal. For the most part the people were only moved by that heartless curiosity which finds a pleasurable excitement in the sight of other people's woes, but there was also very manifest an increasing resentment toward Tom, and not a little of that human ferocity which is easily awakened in time of excitement and which reminds us of a sort of second cousinship that subsists between a crowd of men and a pack of wolves—or between a pack of men and a crowd of wolves.