Twenty minutes elapsed and the court officer announced in stentorian tones that the verdict had been reached. Solemnly the twelve men seated themselves whilst an expectant flutter passed over the room.
Then a voice droned:
"Prisoner, rise."
The lumbering form painfully raised its two humps.
"Prisoner, look upon the jury; jury, look upon the prisoner."
The grizzled head settled itself back between the two pulsing humps; the steady eyes under the shaggy brows looking out for the first time in two days upon the row of men who hated him—all popular citizens of Ithaca.
"Foreman, of the jury, have you found the prisoner innocent or guilty?"
A pause, a hush; then a deliberate:
"Guilty of murder in the first degree."
A little higher rose the bible-back of the fisherman, lower sunk the large head between the deformed shoulders, like the receding head of a turtle, hiding itself under its shell when an enemy draws near. Skinner still stood with hypnotized eyes fastened on the jury; one thought in his mind—Tess.