“We have, your Honor.�
“Is the prisoner at the bar guilty, or not guilty, as charged in the indictment?�
“Not guilty.�
The wave of passion and excitement broke, the court-room rose as one man; the shout was heard ten squares away, and the echo reached the farthest corner of the city. The bailiffs fought and struggled to keep order, for men would have carried the prisoner on their shoulders. He was the only one unmoved. He stood like a rock amid the surging crowd, and it seemed to Diana that he towered, with a certain simplicity and strength that made him seem at once apart from other men and above them. In her heart she wondered at her own temerity, when she had treated him with discourtesy. Here was a primitive man, and the primitive strength, the righteous force in him, held other men, as that strange gift of magnetism that wields and binds and moves millions till they seem but one.
She turned away, holding tightly to her father’s arm, eager to escape, and begrudging the slow and tortuous passage to the door. Behind her and before her, on every hand, from lip to lip, ran the prisoner’s name.
The colonel almost lifted Diana from the crowd into the carriage. Then he took his seat beside her and closed the door; slowly the horses made their way through the throng in the quadrangle. It was raining hard, and the wind blew the moisture across their heated faces.
“By gum!� said Colonel Royall, “they’ll make him governor! But Jacob Eaton—Jacob Eaton!�
The old man was bewildered; he passed his hand over his face. Diana said nothing; the night blurred itself into the rain.
XXV
IT was long past midnight when Mrs. Eaton went down-stairs for the fourth time to see if her son had returned home.