None the less the effort proved unavailing. Forsyth had prophesied truly. Public sentiment was aroused, and there was need enough for a stern example on the side of strict justice. Brant’s friends saw all this written out large in the faces of the jury, and were prepared for the verdict. As a mere matter of decent formality the twelve men left the jury box at the close of the judge’s charge to them; but they were back again before the hum of comment in the crowded courtroom was fairly a-buzz. And in the silence which fell upon all the foreman announced the verdict. The prisoner at the bar had been found guilty as charged.
There was a little hush, the electrified stillness which precedes a death sentence in any court, and then Judge Langford rose to give notice that an appeal would be taken. The court heard him through patiently, and sentence was suspended accordingly. Then the prisoner was remanded to jail, and the trial was over.
Judge Langford had no hope of securing a new trial, and he admitted as much when Forsyth got speech with him. “It was the only thing there was left for us to do,” he said, “and we shall gain nothing by it save a little delay. But having undertaken to plough this young man’s furrow, I shall plough it faithfully to the end.”
Once more, as on a former occasion, the judge’s forecasting was rooted in the event. The motion for a retrial was argued, heard, and denied; the prisoner was sentenced, and the day of execution was set for the Friday before Thanksgiving. And at the pronouncing of the sentence that Friday was no more than a fortnight in the future.
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE WING-BEAT OF AZRAEL
And Dorothy? Truly, these were terrible days and weeks for one who loved, and had lost and found, only to lose again. But, believing in her lover’s innocence as no one else save Henry Antrim did believe in it, she was yet powerless to break a single thread of the net which enmeshed him. She could do naught but grieve despairingly, and that in secret, since none but her father and Antrim guessed the depth of her hurt.
To her in her misery came an angel of light masquerading as one Parker Jarvis. She knew the reporter by sight, and better by repute, since Antrim had spoken much of him and of his friendly movings in Brant’s affair. She also knew that he was of those who would have held Brant excused though guilty; but at this point her knowledge of him paused until, one black Thursday evening in late November, but a single sweep of the clock hands from the fatal Friday morning, when she had stolen out of the house to be alone with her misery, he stood uncovered before her holding the gate for her to pass out.
“Do you know who I am, Miss Langford?” he asked; and when she signed assent he turned and walked beside her.
“I don’t mean to intrude, and I could have only one excuse for waylaying you,” he went on. “If there is any blame, Harry Antrim must answer for it. He doesn’t mean to tell all the things he knows, but sometimes he tells a good bit more than he sets out to, and he has told me enough to make me understand why to-morrow will hurt you worse than it will any of us.”
There was manifestly no answer to be made to this, and she let him go on without hindrance. For to-morrow would end it all, and anything less than death seemed too trivial to be opposed.