With that, receiving a nod of approval from the Judge, he withdrew.
When he had gone the Judge said:
"We may as well save what we can of the time of waiting. Mr. Clerk, if you have the papers ready in the Westover case I'll sign them."
They were passed to him and, after he had signed them, handed over to the sheriff, thus completing that matter at once.
A moment later, the Commonwealth's Attorney returned, pale to the lips, trembling like one in an ague fit, and with the muscles about his mouth twitching in a way that was positively painful to all who looked at him.
In a voice that was hard, metallic, and obviously controlled only by a supreme effort of the will, he addressed the court.
"There has been a terrible mistake made," he said with none of the formalities of speech usual in addressing a tribunal,—"a disastrous, cruel, irreparable mistake, for my share in which I hide my head in shame as I ask God and man to pardon me. In convicting and sentencing Boyd Westover, we have convicted and sentenced an innocent man. The real culprit is now in a jury room adjoining this apartment. He has been caught in a repetition of the act for which Boyd Westover has been convicted and sentenced. He has confessed that he was the offender on the former occasion, and the committing magistrate before whom he was brought this morning has brought him hither to repeat his confession and to let your honor look upon him. It is the most phenomenal case of mistaken identity I ever knew or heard of. Even fiction, with its limitless license of invention, offers no parallel that I ever heard of. The resemblance between this man and Boyd Westover is so perfect, so startling in its completeness that I could never have believed it upon any testimony other than that of my own eyes. I ask permission to bring the prisoner into court."
By this time the court room was packed with all sorts and conditions of men, for the news of what had happened during the night before had spread like wildfire over the city.
A minute later the prisoner, who gave his name as "Dolly Andrews," but admitted that "Dolly" was short for Adolphus, was brought to the bar. At the Commonwealth's Attorney's request, Boyd Westover moved forward and stood by his side.
The two men were precisely alike in size, form and feature, but strangely unlike in expression. As Jack Towns put the matter: "Boyd Westover, being a gentleman, looks into your eyes when he speaks to you or you to him; the other fellow looks anywhere but at you. In the one face there is intelligence,—in the other a low cunning; in the one an alert outlook, in the other a look of morbid introspection. Still the two men are absolutely alike in all physical respects—more alike than I supposed that even twins could be. I could myself easily mistake one for the other, and I don't wonder that a lot of excited school girls, routed out of bed in the middle of the night and with only bedroom candles to see by, made the terrible mistake they did."