Unexpectedly, she flashed at him the question: “Judge Staples, do you truly believe that I stole that money?”
The judge leaned toward her with tears in his eyes.
He answered: “What I truly believe, Mahala, can be of no earthly value to you now. The only thing that can help you here with this accusation against you, is for the prosecutor to fail in proving that you took it.”
Mahala cried to him: “You know I cannot prove that I did not take it; but you know equally as well that he cannot prove that I did.”
Sorrowfully the old judge said: “In order to be cleared of this charge, Mahala, the prosecutor must fail to prove that you took the money.”
Her head bowed, Mahala stood thinking.
Finally she said to the judge and to the jury: “So far as I know, I am quite helpless. I have no proof to offer other than my own word. If you will not accept that I seem to be at your mercy. I beg that you will get through with this in the speediest manner possible.”
The judge closed the case by instructing the jury on the subject of “reasonable doubt” and sent them to agree on a verdict. After a day’s deliberation a verdict of disagreement was rendered. That jury had contained one man whom Martin Moreland dared not approach, a man who had convictions, and was above a price. He had obstinately refused to agree to finding Mahala guilty. He roundly scored the other men for their lack of penetration, of mercy, of honesty.
When Mahala heard the verdict, she quietly slid down in her seat and was taken home unconscious by her lawyer and Jason. When reason returned, many days later, she had to be told that the shock of the trial had driven her mother, in agony and doubt, to her long rest. There awaited Mahala this alleviation: Her case had been dismissed by the sympathetic judge. It was his feeling that the evidence was not sufficient to merit punishment on Mahala’s part. He told the lawyer for the prosecution that he must produce something more tangible than the mere fact that Mahala had been in the house at the time the purse was taken.
This knowledge came too late to be of material help to Mahala. When Jemima tried to tell her, she discovered from her bright eyes, her burning cheeks, and a quivering of her lips that she had developed a fever, and for weeks she lay scorching and babbling while Jemima and Doctor Grayson, with Jason in the background, worked over her.