With an underling in his place at the door, Captain Taylor advanced to take charge of the marshaling of the jury panel. There ensued a great bustling and tramping as the clerk called off the names of those drawn.
While this was proceeding, Joe cast his eyes about the room, animated by a double hope: that Alice would be there to hear him tell his story; that Morgan had come and was in waiting to supply the facts which honor sealed upon his own tongue. He could see only the first few rows of benches with the certainty of individual identification; they were filled with strangers. Beyond them it was conglomerate, that fused and merged thing which seemed a thousand faces, yet one; that blended and commingled mass which we call the public. Out of the mass Joe Newbolt could not sift the lean, shrewd face of Curtis Morgan, nor glean from it the brown hair of Alice Price.
The discovery that Alice was not there smote him with a feeling of sudden hopelessness and abandonment; the reproaches which he had kindled against himself in his solitary days in jail rose up in redoubled torture. He blamed the rashness of an unreasoning moment in which he had forgotten time and circumstance. Her interest was gone from him 250 now, where, if he had waited for vindication, he might have won her heart.
But it was a dream, at the best, he confessed, turning away from his hungry search of the crowd, his head drooping forward in dejection. What did it matter for the world’s final exculpation, if Alice were not there to hear?
His mother nodded to somebody, and touched his hand. Ollie it was, whom she greeted. She was seated near at hand, beside a fat woman with a red and greasy face, whose air of protection and large interest proclaimed her a relative. Joe thought that she filled pretty well the bill that Ollie had made out of her mother, on that day when she had scorned her for having urged her into marriage with Isom.
Ollie was very white in her black mourning dress, and thinner of features than when he had seen her last. She smiled, and nodded to him, with an air of timid questioning, as if doubtful whether he had expected it, and uncertain how it would be received. Joe bowed his head, respectfully.
What a wayside flower she seemed, thought he; how common beside Alice! Yet, she had been bright and refreshing in the dusty way where he had found her. He wondered why she was not within the rail also, near Hammer, if she was for him; or near the prosecutor, if she was on the other side.
He was not alone in this speculation. Many others wondered over that point also. It was the public expectation that she naturally would assist the state in the punishment of her husband’s slayer; but Sam Lucas was not paying the slightest attention to her, and it was not known whether he even had summoned her as a witness.
And now Captain Taylor began to create a fresh commotion by clearing the spectators from the first row of benches to make seats for the jury panel. Judge Maxwell was waiting the restoration of order, leaning back in his chair. Joe scanned his face. 251
Judge Maxwell was tall and large of frame, from which the study and abstemiousness of his life had worn all superfluous flesh. His face, cleanly shaved, was expressive of the scholarly attainments which made his decisions a national standard. The judge’s eyes were bushed over with great, gray brows, the one forbidding cast in his countenance; they looked out upon those who came for judgment before him through a pair of spring-clamp spectacles which seemed to ride precariously upon his large, bony nose. The glasses were tied to a slender black braid, which he wore looped about his neck.