When Hammer called his name, Joe felt a revival of his old desire to go to the witness-chair and tell Judge Maxwell all about it in his own way, untenable and dangerous as his position had appeared to him in his hours of depression. Now the sheriff released his arm, and he went forward eagerly. He held up his hand solemnly while the clerk administered the oath, then took his place in the witness-chair. Ollie’s face was the first one that his eyes found in the crowd.
It seemed as if a strong light had been focused upon it, leaving the rest of the house in gloom. The shrinking appeal which lay in her eyes moved him to pity. He strove to make her understand that the cunning of the sharpest lawyer could set no trap which would surprise her secret from him, nor death itself display terrors to frighten it out of his heart.
It seemed that a sunbeam broke in the room then, but perhaps it was only the clearing away of doubt and vacillation from his mind, with the respectable feeling that he had regained all the nobility which was slipping from him, and had come back to a firm understanding with himself.
And there was Alice, a little nearer to the bar than he had expected to see her. Her face seemed strained and anxious, but he could not tell whether her sympathy was dearer, her feeling softer for him in that hour than it would have been for any other man. Colonel Price had yielded his seat to a woman, and now he stood at the back of the room in front of the inner door as a privileged person, beside Captain Taylor. 277
Mrs. Newbolt sat straight-backed and expectant, her hand on the back of Joe’s empty chair, while the eager people strained forward to possess themselves of the sensation which they felt must soon be loosed among them.
Joe’s hair had grown long during his confinement. He had smoothed it back from his forehead and tucked it behind his ears. The length of it, the profusion, sharpened the thinness of his face; the depth of its blackness drew out his pallor until he seemed all bloodless and cold.
Three inches of great, bony arm showed below his coat sleeves; that spare garment buttoned across his chest, strained at its seams. Joe wore the boots which he had on when they arrested him, scarred and work-worn by the stubble and thorns of Isom Chase’s fields and pastures. His trousers were tucked into their wrinkled tops, which sagged half-way down his long calves.
Taken in the figure alone, he was uncouth and oversized in his common and scant gear. But the lofty nobility of his severe young face and the high-lifting forehead, proclaimed to all who were competent in such matters that it was only his body that was meanly clad.
Hammer began by asking the usual questions regarding nativity and age, and led on with the history of Joe’s apprenticeship to Chase, the terms of it, its duration, compensation; of his treatment at his master’s hands, their relations of friendliness, and all that. There was a little tremor and unsteadiness in Joe’s voice at first, as of fright, but this soon cleared away, and he answered in steady tones.
The jurors had straightened up out of their wearied apathy, and were listening now with all ears. Joe did not appear to comprehend their importance in deciding his fate, people thought, seeing that he turned from them persistently and addressed the judge.