Harry's heart contracted as if a giant hand had clutched it. His elation fell like a rotten tree girdled at the roots. If Hugh did not die! He chilled as though in a spray of liquid air. Hugh's escape—the chance his conscience had given him, was cut off. He had not betrayed him when the way was open; how could he do so now when flight was barred? If to deliver him then to the hangman would have been cowardice, how much more cowardly now, when it was to save himself, and when the other was helpless? And the law demanded its victim!
As a drowning man sees flit before him the panorama of his life, so in this clarifying instant these lurid pictures of the tangle of his past flashed across Harry's mental vision.
The judge reached for the newspaper the lawyer held, ran his eye over it, and brought his gavel down with an angry snort.
"Take him away," he said. "His testimony is ordered stricken from the records. The fine is remitted, Mr. Felder—we can't make you responsible for lunatics. Bailiff, see that this man has no further chance to disturb these proceedings. The court stands adjourned."
CHAPTER XLI FELDER WALKS WITH DOCTOR BRENT
Felder had been among the last to leave the court-room. He was discomfited and angry. He had meant to make a telling point for the defense, and the unbalanced imagination of a strolling, bigot gospeller had undone him. His own precipitate and ill-considered action had uncovered an idiotic mare's-nest, to taint his appeal with bathos and open his cause with a farcical anti-climax. He glumly gathered his scattered papers, put with them the leaf of the newspaper from which the district attorney had read, and despatched the lot to his office by a messenger.
At the door of the court-house Doctor Brent slipped an arm through his.