She had no difficulty in picking out the prisoner; a mild-faced, sandy-haired little man, shrunken and bowed in his place beside his lawyers. Just back of him sat a slender woman in rusty black, whose face was hidden from Betty's gaze and whose tremulous hand reached out in pathetic tenderness to the man before her.
Betty looked again at the prisoner and the puzzled look in her eyes gave place to a flash of recognition. She leaned forward in her chair, agape with amazement and startled interest, until the consciousness of shrewd glances from the assembled representatives of the press made her draw back in belated caution.
Vaguely, almost subconsciously, she observed the stolid jury and the stern, inflexible countenance of the judge. The faces of the spectators, too, passed before her in meaningless review, not one impressing itself individually upon her agitated mind.
As the case progressed, and witness succeeded witness, it became evident that the whole defense hinged upon an alibi which the prisoner's attorneys found difficulty in proving. The testimony offered was inconclusive and the prosecutor riddled it with ease or blasted it with deftly turned ridicule.
The hideous story was gradually unfolded in all its revolting detail, and Betty's heart sank within her as the evidence, circumstantial, but damning, was heaped upon the prisoner's bowed head. The little woman behind him did not waver in her attitude of protective tenderness and something in her tremulous, almost furtive, gestures appealed to Betty as being vaguely familiar, although the face was still turned from her.
A particularly brilliant shaft of ironic wit from the prosecutor created a stir of amusement among the spectators and as the clerk of the court rapped for order, Betty's eyes again sought the judge. Beneath the huge mural painting of Justice he sat immovable, his thin lips set in a straight line, his cold, gray eyes fastened with grim intentness upon the prisoner. No mercy tempered his jurisdiction, she felt certain; no slightest benefit of a doubt would be permitted to weigh in the scales for any unfortunate mortal whose life might hang in the balance. She shuddered, her gaze once more descending to the little ignominiously isolated group below and at that instant the woman behind the prisoner turned her head and the cold light from the tall window fell full upon her face.
It was little Miss Pope! The timid, nervous, self-effacing seamstress who had warned her of danger and begged her to leave almost beneath the argus eyes of Mrs. Atterbury, and whose strange words had returned to the girl's mind within the hour, after a lapse of many eventful days. What connection could exist between her and the wretched creature at the Bar? Were Mrs. Atterbury's affairs also somehow involved in this tragic crisis?
Her employer had declared herself uninterested in the case herself and no mention had been made of Miss Pope, yet she must have known the girl would recognize her. The letter was to be delivered by a man; could it be that it would come from the prisoner himself or one of his friends? He seemed singularly alone in his trouble and sat as if hypnotized, gazing straight before him in a dull stupor of misery. Once his eyes met Betty's and the girl swiftly paled, but there was no consciousness of recognition in their fixed stare.
Until the morning session ended the girl sat tense and motionless, listening to the testimony, but only receiving a general impression of its tenor. A conflict was raging within her, and she faced the most vital problem which had ever presented itself for her decision. Heretofore her path, beset with difficulties as it was, had been plainly marked before her and her will had driven her on relentlessly over every obstacle, but now she had reached without warning an insurmountable barrier and she hesitated which course to pursue around it.
A rustle of papers and shuffling of feet in the press enclosure and a concerted movement among the spectators aroused her from her thoughts and apprised her that court had adjourned. The judge rose in all the awful majesty of his black robes and sweeping down from the Bench, came toward her along the narrow aisle. Betty noted the stern preoccupation in his averted eyes and the grim, inexorable set of his lean, shaven jaw and her vision blurred in pity for the hapless victim of circumstances whose doom seemed already sealed.