In a jerky, strained voice he told of his mailing a letter, from a village within a short distance of Bug Hollow, to a girl friend of his on the afternoon of the night of the robbery. He swore positively that this letter was in this same mail-bag, because he had handed it to the carrier himself before he got on his horse, and added, with equal positiveness, that it had never reached its destination. The value or purpose of this last testimony, the non-receipt of the letter, was not clear to me, except upon the theory that the charge of robbery might fail if it could be proved by the defence that no letter was missing.
Bud fastened his eyes on Halliday and smiled as he made this last statement about the undelivered letter, the first smile I had seen across his face, but gave no other sign indicating that Halliday's testimony affected his chances in any way.
Then followed the usual bad-character witnesses—both friends of Halliday, I could see; two this time—one charging Bud with all the crimes in the decalogue, and the other, under the lead of the prosecutor, launching forth into an account of a turkey-shoot in which Bud had wrongfully claimed the turkey—an account which was at last cut short by the Judge in the midst of its most interesting part, as having no particular bearing on the case.
Up to this time no one had appeared for the accused, nor had any objection been made to any part of the testimony except by the Judge. Neither had any one of the prosecutor's witnesses been asked a single question in rebuttal.
With the resting of the Government's case a dead silence fell upon the room.
The Judge waited a few moments, the tap of his lead-pencil sounding through the stillness, and then asked if the attorney for the defence was ready.
No one answered. Again the Judge put the question, this time with some impatience.
Then he addressed the prisoner.
"Is your lawyer present?"
Bud bent forward in his chair, put his hands on his knees, and answered slowly, without a tremor in his voice: