So the evidence went on. Witnesses were sworn in and testified to the most unpleasant details in a well constructed tale of horror. Tyke was clever, but Bill was sharp, and what the two of them could not think out the canny Cottar did. They had left no question unprepared for, no weak places in their line of evidence. They even had an old flashlight of Darcy’s they had found where he had left it last at one of their meeting places, and most carefully had they preserved it without handling that the finger prints might be observed. Obligingly Darcy put out his fingers for the impression, that smile of half amusement on his lips. So well he understood the revenge that was working all this elaborate network of lies to catch him.
Yet as the evidence went on he began to realize how cleverly it had been done, and how only a miracle of some kind could save him. He sat gravely watching it all, listening. Now and then jotting down a note for his own reply when his time came, but for the most part, gravely listening, and the day went on and blacker grew the evidence against him. The excitement in the court-room was great. There were not wanting gruesome details and Darcy’s face grew stern and his soul sick within him. To think that Joyce should, through him, be mixed up in a loathsome mess like this! He would rather have died a thousand deaths than to have had her name connected in such wise.
The spectators were strained to the highest point. Nan, heavily veiled and weeping, was most affected. When it came her turn to testify she told of the beautiful relation between herself and Joyce, but said that Joyce was very secretive and went out a good deal evenings, staying late. Once during Bill’s blunt testimony she screamed and fainted and had to be taken out, but insisted on coming back again. And hourly the look of suffering grew on Darcy’s face, as if the ordeal were actual physical pain. But once, there was a little relaxing of the strain, when old Noah Casey took the stand, and was asked to swear that he would tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
He climbed into his place and laid a trembling, knotted hand upon the book, but when they asked him to swear he smiled about upon them and shook his head.
“My mother taught me not to swear,” he said serenely, while the four who were sponsoring him frowned and cursed beneath their breath.
He stood there looking about on the throng, his quick bright eyes travelling from one face to another, half suspicious of them all, half frightened like a wild thing of the woods. And when the people laughed he laughed with them at himself. The difficulty about the oath over, he told his story, eagerly, somewhat like a child, in short hurried sentences, his bright eyes still hurrying over the audience, his long nervous fingers fingering the brim of his old felt hat. “I was going acrost the medder—” he began, “ahint of the graveyard—” and Gene’s lawyer helped him out with questions. “You saw a bundle on the ground like a human body—” the bright eyes focused on the lawyer an instant.
“No, it was broken glass. Leastways that’s what I thought I saw. They tell me—” The lawyer hurried into another question, and the Judge interrupted:
“Suppose you look around, Noah, and tell me if you can see the man you saw that night digging in the graveyard?”
The bright eyes focused on the Judge, and then turned quickly toward Tyke. The lawyer hastened with his assistance.
“Was it this man, Noah?” he pointed to the prisoner.