What Armitage said seemed to have paralysed everybody. The silence was heavier, more dismayed than it had been a few minutes before. Nobody spoke nobody moved. Michael's friends sat with hunched shoulders, not looking at each other, their gaze fixed ahead of them, or on the place where Michael was sitting, waiting to see his face and to hear the first sound of his voice. Potch, who had gone to hold his father back when Charley had made his attack on Michael, stood against the wall, his eyes on Michael, his face illumined by the fire of his faith. His glance swept the crowd as if he would consign it to perdition for its doubt and humiliation of Michael. The silence was invaded by a stir of movement, the shuffle of feet. People began to mutter and whisper together. Still Michael did not move. George Woods turned round to him.
"For God's sake speak, Michael," he said. Michael did not move.
Then from the back of the hall marched Snow-Shoes. Tall and stately, he strode up the narrow passage between the rows of seats wedged close together. People watched him with an abstract curiosity, their minds under the shadow of the accusation against Michael, waiting only to hear what he would say to it. When Snow-Shoes reached the top of the hall he turned and faced the men He held up a narrow package wrapped in newspaper and before them all handed it to Rouminof, who was still hovering near the edge of the platform.
"Your stones," he said. "I took them." And in the same stately, measured fashion he had entered, he walked out of the hall again.
Cheers resounded, cheers on cheers, until the roof rang. There was no hearing anything beyond cheers and cries for Michael. People crushed round him shaking his hand, clinging to him, tears in their eyes. When order was achieved again, it was found that Paul was on the platform going over the stones with Armitage, Newton looking on. Paul was laughing and crying; he had forgotten Charley, forgotten everything but his joy in fingering his lost gems.
When there was a lull in the tempest of excitement and applause, Armitage spoke.
"I've got to apologise to you, Michael," he said. "I do most contritely.... I don't yet understand—but the facts are, the opals are here, and Mr. Riley has said—"
Michael stood up. His mouth moved and twisted as though he were going to speak before his voice was heard. When it was, it sounded harsh and as if only a great effort of will drove it from him.
"I want to say," he said, "I did take those stones ... not from Paul ... but from Charley."
His words went through the heavy quiet slowly, a vibration of his suffering on every one of them. He told how he had seen Charley and Paul going home together, and how he had seen Charley take the package of opals from Rouminof's pocket and put them in his own.