The judge, an old man with silvery hair, turned to the jury.
"Retire, gentlemen, to consider of your verdict."
The door to the jury-room closed behind them, and left a thousand eyes fixed anxiously upon it.
They had scarcely disappeared when the knock of the foreman was heard at the door.
"Bring in the jury, Mr. Sheriff," the judge ordered.
The foreman of the jury, an unknown man, tall and stooped, with scraggly hair and beard, handed a folded paper to the clerk.
"Mr. Clerk, read the verdict," the judge ordered; and the clerk read:
"We, the jury, find the defendant not guilty."
The words were received in utter silence.
Presently all, jury and bar and spectators, filed from the court- room, quietly, not with oaths or threats of violence for those others who at the outskirts of the town were waiting for their answer. And they, the waiting ones, found their answer in this silence, and so now slipped out into the forest. The crowds of white men in the town also quietly melted away.
That night at the hotel the judge and certain citizens were engaged in quiet conversation.