“I should like to own a boy like that,” the bishop thought then, with a touch of the loneliness which sometimes caught him.
He had said that over to himself more than once in the two months since the incident, and now, in the park of Lancaster, as the horseman disappeared into the June greenness, and the startled little boy hurried off to school, he thought of his garden and his house, and the things dear to him, which must go to strangers, and the bright face of the rider on Mount Royal came with a throb of pain, and he felt his isolation and said it again: “I should like to own a boy like that.” Then he trudged cheerfully back toward town, putting away, as was his habit, any personal sadness. And when he got into the city, it was only ten o’clock—an hour yet before Doctor Fletcher’s train. He strolled down Brandon Street, past the court-house. The great doors were wide open, and through them rang a dictatorial voice which he knew well, the voice of Judge Lovett. The bishop halted; the winning, odd smile by which people who loved him remembered him lighted his face—a smile which drew his strong mouth sidewise in a characteristic line, keen, humorous, kindly. He liked Judge Lovett. He turned into the court-house, and dropped in the back row by the side of a man who made way for him deferentially.
“What’s the case?” the bishop whispered.
“A murder case—young fellow’s being tried for murder done twenty miles from here, about two months ago—trying to prove an alibi, but it looks right black. That’s him, the big, light-haired chap.” And the bishop looked, and saw the rider of Mount Royal.
Judge Lovett’s voice went on, emotionless, incisive. “You say that you were in Montreal on the sixth of last May; can you prove it? Is there any one who saw you and talked to you there who would remember you?”
The bishop, standing up, staring, his pulse beating in jumps, listened to the answer.
“There is one man whom I talked to when I was riding on the mountain,” the frank tones trailed off rather hopelessly, “but I don’t know his name or where he lives.”
At the back of the court-room there was a stir. A sudden voice lifted across the place, startling judge and jury and the crowded benches of listeners. “I am the man,” the bishop spoke loudly and walked forward down the aisle to the rail.
There was a dramatic silence. The court-room seemed to catch its breath as one man. The judge’s dominant speech broke the hush.
“Bishop,” he asked, “did you see this young man in Montreal on the sixth of May?”