"What say you, guilty or not guilty?"
The foreman did not answer. He was leaning forward, looking over the heads of the crowd. The judge stood up. People turned, and the room was suddenly a-rustle with surprised movement. The crowd at the back of the room parted, and up the center aisle, toward the judge's desk, staggered a figure—a man whose face, ghastly and convulsed, was partly swathed in bandages. At the door of the judge's room a girl stood transfixed and staring.
The crowd gasped. They saw the familiar profile, a replica of the prisoner's—the mark that slanted across the brow—the eyes preternaturally bright and fevered.
A pale-faced, breathless man in clerical dress pushed forward through the press, as the figure stopped ... thrust out his hands blindly.
"Not—guilty, your Honor!" he said.
A cry came from the prisoner at the bar. He leaped toward him as he fell and caught him in his arms.
CHAPTER XLIX THE CRIMSON DISK
The group in the judge's room was hushed in awestruck silence. The door was shut, but through the panels, from the court-room, came the murmur of many wondering voices. By the sofa on which lay the man who had made expiation stood the bishop and Harry Sanderson. Jessica knelt beside it, and the judge and those who stood with him in the background knew that the curtain was falling upon a strange and tangled drama of life and death.