He held out his hand, and Brant’s grasp of it was not without emotion.
“No one could be kinder than you, Judge Langford; and some time, in this world or another, you shall know that I am not ungrateful.”
When the judge was fairly out of the cell and the sound of his footsteps had died away in the corridor, Brant threw himself upon the cot and groaned aloud. But his speech was of gratitude.
“Thank God, that trial is over! If they could devise many more such torments as that, I’d hang myself to the grating and have done with it!”
That evening, at nine o’clock, a fact leaked out which Forsyth hastened to telephone to the house in the Highlands: the Grand Jury had found a true bill against George Brant for the wilful murder of James Harding.
CHAPTER XXX
HOW LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP THREW A MAIN
For two weeks after the judge’s first interview with his unwilling client the possibility of successfully defending Brant receded steadily, and no new discoveries came to countermine the wall of evidence which was slowly and surely closing in upon him.
In this interval Colonel Bowran had returned, and, contrary to Brant’s expectation or desire, had at once championed his draughtsman’s cause. There had been more than one stormy interview—they were tempestuous on the colonel’s part, at least—in which the chief engineer’s wrath was directed at Brant’s obduracy. And when expostulation and friendly abuse had failed, the colonel sought out Judge Langford and Forsyth, joining forces cordially with the prisoner’s friends, but bringing nothing helpful in the way of additional information.
On the other hand, the prosecution lacked nothing but the culprit’s confession of having a complete case. Brant’s record was exploited, and the details of his previous quarrel with Harding, or so much of them as were known to Draco’s bartender, were dragged out of Deverney as sound teeth are extracted from the jaw of an unwilling patient.
So much of the State’s side of the case was known to Brant’s friends—by what means Forsyth’s young men could best have explained—and there was consternation among them in just proportion. If the tide could not be stemmed before the rapidly approaching day of the trial, the judge knew he should go into court without any case. And, making due allowance for the change that had recently been wrought in public sentiment, he had every reason to fear the worst for his client.