"Well, Mr. Craft," said the judge, "what have you to offer in this matter? Your attorney seems to have left you to handle the case for yourself; we will hear you."
"My attorney is a rascal," said Craft, white with passion, as he arose. "His part and presence in that trial was a curse on it from the beginning. He wasn't satisfied to ruin me, but he must now seek to disgrace me as well. He is—"
The judge interrupted him:—
"We do not care to hear your opinion of Mr. Sharpman; we have neither the time nor the disposition to listen to it. You caused this defendant to produce before us the body of the boy Ralph. They are both here; what further do you desire?"
"I desire to take the boy home with me. The judgment of this court is that he is my grandson. In the absence of other persons legally entitled to take charge of him, I claim that right. I ask the court to order him into my custody."
The old man resumed his seat, and immediately fell into his customary fit of coughing.
When he had recovered, the judge, who had in the meantime been writing rapidly, said:—
"We cannot agree with you, Mr. Craft, as to the law. Although the presumption may be that the jury based their verdict on the boy's testimony that he is your grandson, yet their verdict does not state that fact specifically, and we have nothing on the record to show it. It would be necessary for you to prove that relation here and now, by new and independent evidence, before we could place the boy in your custody under any circumstances. But we shall save you the trouble of doing so by deciding the matter on other grounds. The court has heard from your own lips, within a few days, that you are, or have been, engaged in a business such as to make thieving and lying a common occurrence in your life. The court has also heard from your own lips that during the time this child was in your custody, you not only treated him inhumanly as regarded his body, but that you put forth every effort to destroy what has since proved itself to be a pure and steadfast soul. A kind providence placed it in the child's power to escape from you, and the same providence led him to the door of a man whose tenderness, whose honor, and whose nobility of character, no matter how humble his station in life, marks him as one eminently worthy to care for the body and to minister to the spirit of a boy like this.
"We feel that to take this lad now from his charge and to place him in yours, would be to do an act so utterly repugnant to justice, to humanity, and to law, that, if done, it ought to drag us from this bench in disgrace. We have marked your petition dismissed; we have ordered you to pay the cost of this proceeding, and we have remanded the boy Ralph to the custody of William Buckley."
Simon Craft said not a word. He rose from his chair, steadied himself for a moment on his cane, then shuffled up the aisle, out at the door and down the hall into the street. Disappointment, anger, bitter hatred, raged in his heart and distorted his face. The weight of years, of disease, of a criminal life, sat heavily upon him as he dragged himself miserably along the crowded thoroughfare, looking neither to the right nor the left, thinking only of the evil burden of his own misfortunes. Now and then some one who recognized him stopped, turned, looked at him scornfully for a moment, and passed on. Then he was lost to view. He was never seen in the city of Wilkesbarre again. He left no friends behind him there. He was first ridiculed, then despised, and then—forgotten.