To Jessica the sudden blankness came with a nervous shock. Since that first meeting in the jail she had pinned her faith on the reassurance that had been given her. She had fought down doubt and questioning and leaned hard upon her trust. But in her overwrought condition, as the end drew near with no solution of the enigma, this faith sometimes faltered. The mystery was so impenetrable, the peril so imminent! To-day, in the court-room, her subtle sense had told her that, belief and conviction aside, a pronounced feeling of sympathy existed for the man she loved. She had not needed Mrs. Halloran's comforting assurances on this score, for the atmosphere was surcharged with it. She had felt it when she laid the carnation in his hand, and even more unmistakably while she had given her testimony. She had realized the value of that one unvarnished fact, introduced so effectively—that he had had time to get away, and instead had chosen to surrender himself.
Yet even as she thrilled to the responsive current, Jessica had not been deceived. She felt the pitiful impotence of mere sympathy against the apparent weight of evidence that had frightened her. Surely, surely, if he was to save himself, the truth must come out speedily! But the end of it all was in sight and he had not spoken. To-day as she watched his face, the thought had come to her that perhaps his reassurance had been given only to comfort her and spare her anguish. The thought had come again and again to torture her; only by a great effort had she been able to give her testimony. As the pall of darkness fell upon the court-room, it brought a sense of premonition, as though the incident prefigured the gloomy end. She turned sick, and stumbled down the aisle, feeling that she must reach the outer air.
A pushing handful opened the way to the corridor, and in a moment more she was in the starlit out-of-doors, fighting down her faintness, with the babble of talk behind her and the cool breeze on her cheek.
CHAPTER XXXIX THE UNSUMMONED WITNESS
In the room Jessica had left, the turmoil was simmering down; here and there a match was struck and showed a circle of brightness. The glimmer of one of them lit the countenance of a man who had brushed her sleeve as he entered. It was Hallelujah Jones. The evangelist had prolonged his stay at Smoky Mountain, for the town, thrilling to its drama of crime and judgment, had seemed a fruitful vineyard. He had no local interest in the trial of Hugh Stires, and had not attended its session; but he had been passing the place when the lights went out and in curiosity had crowded into the confusion, where now he looked about him with eager interest.
A candle-flame fluttered now, like a golden butterfly, on the judge's desk, another on the table inside the bar. More grew along the walls until the room was bathed in tremulous yellow light. It touched the profile of the prisoner, turned now, for his look had followed Jessica and was fixed questioningly on her empty seat. In the unseeing darkness Harry had held the white carnation to his lips before he drew its stem through his lapel.
The street preacher's jaw dropped in blank astonishment, for what he saw before him brought irresistibly back another scene that, months before, had bit into his mind. The judge's high desk turned instantly to a chapel altar, and the table back of the polished railing to a communion table. The minister that had looked across it in the candle-light had worn a white carnation in his buttonhole. His face—
Hallelujah Jones started forward with an exclamation. A thousand times his zealot imagination had pictured the recreant clergyman he had unmasked as an outcast, plunging toward the lake of brimstone. Here it was at last in his hand, the end of the story! The worst of criminals, skulking beneath an alias! He sprang up the aisle.