But Robbins did not listen. It was as though the foundations of his world crumbled round him. That truth should fail, that innocent men should suffer— He fumbled at the sleeve of the man on the other side.
'I—didn’t hear. They said—'
'Sh-h!' the man warned him, and then, behind his sheltering hand, 'Guilty.'
The judge’s voice dropped, and the speaker began moving with others toward the door. Robbins moved, too—as one dazed, uncertain what he did. Some one stopped him in the outer passage. He was conscious of congratulatory sentences. He heard his own voice speaking words which, seemingly, were not without meaning. And all the while his mind waited, awed, for the impending catastrophe.
Mercifully, the house was empty when he reached home. He tiptoed into his own room, and there, the door closed behind him, stood for a moment, listening. Then, with an exclamation, he dropped to his knees beside the bed and buried his face against it.
For an hour he knelt there, bodily quiet, his mind beating, circling, thrusting desperately against its surrounding cage of falsehood. At first it was all fear—how the exposure would come, how best he might sustain himself against it. Then, imperceptibly, a deeper terror crept into his thinking. Suppose it should not come? Suppose— But that was unthinkable. For a lie to blast a man’s whole life, for a lie to brand him. Stealthily, as if his very stirring might incense the devil-god of such a world, he slid down, sitting beside the bed, his distended, horror-fascinated eyes hard on the wall. In these minutes his young faith in God and justice fought to the death with the injustice before him—fought and won.
'He’ll be sentenced Friday,' he found himself thinking, drawing on some half-heard scrap of conversation. 'That’s four days. There’s time enough—'
He dragged himself up and lay down at full length. Something hot smarted upon his face; he put up his hand to find his cheeks wet with tears. They flowed quietly for a long time—soothingly. He fell asleep at last, his lashes still heavy with them.
He was very early at the court-house Friday morning. Cartwright, coming in at nine to his office, crossed the corridor to speak to him—cheerily.
'Well, we got our man, Robbins. You made a good witness—I meant to tell you so before; no confusing you. Look here, my boy, you’re not fretting over this? If it hadn’t been you, it would have been some one else. There’s no covering a crime like that.'