All at once the thing was clear to him. It was not Whiting who was being sentenced: it was God who was on trial, it was truth, good faith, the right to hope.
The impulse of his cry had wrenched him from his chair. He stood flung forward against the rail.
'You can’t! I never saw him! They were tormenting me and I said I did. He wasn’t there—'
Behind him the court-room rang with excitement. He was aware of startled exclamations. He was aware of Cartwright, tragic-eyed, beside him, half-sheltering him, calling to him.
'Robbins! What’s wrong? He’s not speaking under oath. He’s been brooding—'
For a moment he held himself erect among them, high-headed, joyous, splendid with the exaltation of the martyr. Then, suddenly, his eyes met the eyes of the prisoner. He dropped back into his seat, his shaking hands before his face.
It had lasted a second, less than a second, that frank, involuntary revelation; but in that second, his guard beaten down by sheer amazement, the prisoner’s guilt stood plain in his face. In that second, reading the craven record of it, Robbins saw the glory of martyrdom snatched from him forever—knew himself, now and now only, irrevocably perjured.
WHAT MR. GREY SAID
BY MARGARET PRESCOTT MONTAGUE
HE was the smallest blind child at Lomax, the State school for deaf and blind children. Even Jimmie Little, who looked like a small gray mouse, and who had always been regarded by the teachers as not much bigger than a minute, appeared large beside Stanislaus. He was so small, in fact, that Mr. Lincoln, the Superintendent, had declined at first to admit him.