"Now, gentlemen, we have thought it over for a long time," said the coroner, after a solemn pause. "We must bring in our verdict before long. It must either be 'party or parties unknown,' or we must hold someone we do suspect.
"We have had no one here that we could suspect until now. Take this young man—he is practically a stranger. He proves himself to be of violent and ungovernable temper. Allowed to go once from the justice of the law, he forgets that and goes violent again. He assaults a second time one of our citizens, Mr. Adamson. He resists arrest once by a officer of the law, and in the same afternoon he threatens that officer. He says, 'I'll get you.'
"This young man is seen just before one o'clock running over in this direction. Just a little ahead of him the victim of this crime was seen walking. He was killed, as his daughter testifies, somewhere just about one o'clock—it was at that time that he staggered into the house here.
"Just after one o'clock this young man is seen running—one of the hottest nights we have had this summer—running away from the scene of the crime, and toward his own home.
"I don't want to lead your own convictions in any way. I am willing to say, however, that if we have not found a man to hold for this crime, then we ain't apt to find him!"
"But, gentlemen, you don't mean"—poor Don began, his face pale for the first time, a sudden terror in his soul—"you can't mean that I did this!"
But he gazed into the faces of six men, upon whom rested the duty of vengeance for the wrong done to the society which they represented. Of these six all but two were openly hostile to him, and those two were sad. Rawlins, minister of the Church of Christ; Nels Jorgens, the blacksmith—they two were sad. But they two also were citizens.
"This witness," went on Coroner Blackman, "has in a way both abused us and defied us. He said he was not on trial. That is true. We can't try him. All we can do is to hold any man on whom a reas'nable suspicion of this crime may be fixed. We could hold several suspects here, if there was that many. All we do is to pass the whole question on to the grand jury when it meets here. That's tomorrow morning. Before the grand jury any man accused can have his own counsel and the case can be taken up more conclusive. So the question for us now is, Shall we call it 'party or parties unknown,' or shall we——"
Don Lane dropped into a seat, his face in his hands, in his heart the bitter cry that all the world and all the powers of justice governing the world had now utterly forsaken him. The sheriff rose, and taking him by the arm, led him into another room.
In ten minutes a half-dozen reporters, trooping up from the train and waiting impatiently at the outer door, knew the nature of the verdict: "We the jury sitting upon the body of Joel Tarbush, deceased by violence, find that deceased came to his death by a blow from a blunt instrument held in the hands of Dieudonné Lane."