The court room seemed to be very dark now. His head was whirling away and getting beyond his control. When he looked up he seemed to see it on the other side of the room. He did not recognize the two men in handcuffs that the Chief was bringing into the room. He did not hear what the Judge was saying. He had slumped in a little heap on the witness stand with his eyes closed, and his hands groping together. He thought that he was praying to God's Son to come and help Mark because he had failed. He wasn't good enough and he had failed!
The doctor had come with a bound up the aisle and was kneeling with Billy in his arms. Mark was leaning over the rail with a white anxious face. The minister was trying to make a way through the crowd, and the sergeant-at-arms was pushing the crowd back, and making a space about the unconscious boy. Some-one opened a window. The Chief and one of his men brought a cot. There was a pillow from the car, and there was that medicine again—bringing him back—just as he thought he had made God hear—! Oh, why did they bother him?
Suddenly down by the door a diversion occurred. Someone had entered with wild burning eyes dressed in a curious assortment of garments. They were trying to put him out, but he persisted.
The word was brought up: “Someone has a very important piece of evidence which he wishes to present.”
Billy's gray eyes opened as the man mounted to the witness stand. He was lying on the cot at one side and his gaze rested on the new witness, dazedly at first, and then with growing comprehension. Old Ike Fenner, the tailor, Cherry Fenner's father!
Mark was looking at Billy and had not noticed:
But the man began to speak in a high shrill voice:
“I came to say that I'm the man that killed Dolph Haskins! Mark Carter had nothin' to do with it. I done it! I meant to kill him because he ruined the life of my little girl! My baby!”
There was a sudden catch in his voice like a great sob, and he clutched at the rail as if he were going to fall, but he went on, his eyes burning like coals:
“I shot him with Tom Petrie's gun that I found atop o' the door, an' I put it back where I found it. You take my finger prints and compare 'em with the marks on the gun an' the winder sill. You ask Sandy Robison! He seen me do it. You ask Cherry! She seen me too. She was facin' the winder eatin' her supper with that devil, and I shot him and she seen me! I did it—”