“Arresting my son for shooting Jack Percy! Are you crazy? The thing is preposterous,—impossible!” the judge exclaimed, with the voice and manner of one who does not think any great calamity can come to him because it never has.
“It’s true, though, and the town’s alive with it. Jump in! don’t wait a minute.”
The judge had come out without his hat, which, in his excitement, he forgot entirely as he sprang into the carriage and was driven bare-headed, with his white hair blowing in the wind, to the church where Paul was sitting on the steps, with Max beside him, a picture of perplexity and despair.
“Oh, father, I am so glad you have come. You know it is not true,” Paul said, lifting his face, across which there flashed a ray of hope that with his father near no harm could befall him.
“What does this mean? I don’t understand it,” the judge asked Max, who began to tell his story with a great many apologies for being mixed up in it and saying he didn’t believe it, but had to do his duty.
Something the judge said made Paul exclaim, “Oh, father, you do not believe I did it either by mistake or otherwise!”
During the rapid ride the judge had learned all Tom knew of the matter. Max had added a good deal which Tom had not told, and just for one instant the father wavered, not with a thought that the act was premeditated, but that it was an accident which could be explained. Before he was elected judge he had been a prominent criminal lawyer, with a wide reputation for his skill in cross-questioning, and now he said to his son, “Tom tells me you were not near the spot,—that you had no firearms about you,—that you knew nothing of the shooting until some time after it happened. Is this true?”
“Yes, it is true, and true, too, that I was looking for Jack when I passed Miss Hansford’s cottage. I wanted to give him a message from Clarice. I must have passed near where he was lying, but did not see him. I made a detour in the woods thinking to find him. I went as far as the old brick kiln and turned back another way and came across Tom coming from Still Haven. We heard some one had been shot and I went at once to see who it was. That is all I know. I am as innocent as you. Max says they think it a mistake which I can explain and it will not go hard with me. There is no mistake. I cannot explain. God knows I didn’t do it, and you believe me, father.”
There was dumb entreaty in Paul’s face, and putting his arm around him the judge said, “My boy is innocent, and please God, we will prove him so.”
“Must you do this dirty work?” he added, in an aside to Max, who was again wiping the sweat from his face, this time with a handkerchief more soiled than his hands.