There was, therefore, a sort of necessity, that the case of Maurice Gerald, as of the other suspected murderers, should be tried within a limited time.
As no one objected, there was no one to ask for a postponement; and it stood upon the docket for the day in question—the fifteenth of the month.
The accused might require the services of a legal adviser. There was no regular practitioner in the place: as in these frontier districts the gentlemen of the long robe usually travel in company with the Court; and the Court had not yet arrived. For all that, a lawyer had appeared: a “counsellor” of distinction; who had come all the way from San Antonio, to conduct the case. As a volunteer he had presented himself!
It may have been generosity on the part of this gentleman, or an eye to Congress, though it was said that gold, presented by fair fingers, had induced him to make the journey.
When it rains, it rains. The adage is true in Texas as regards the elements; and on this occasion it was true of the lawyers.
The day before that appointed for the trial of the mustanger, a second presented himself at Fort Inge, who put forward his claim to be upon the side of the prisoner.
This gentleman had made a still longer journey than he of San Antonio; a voyage, in fact: since he had crossed the great Atlantic, starting from the metropolis of the Emerald Isle. He had come for no other purpose than to hold communication with the man accused of having committed a murder!
It is true, the errand that had brought him did not anticipate this; and the Dublin solicitor was no little astonished when, after depositing his travelling traps under the roof of Mr Oberdoffer’s hostelry, and making inquiry about Maurice Gerald, he was told that the young Irishman was shut up in the guard-house.
Still greater the attorney’s astonishment on learning the cause of his incarceration.
“Fwhat! the son of a Munsther Gerald accused of murdher! The heir of Castle Ballagh, wid its bewtiful park and demesne. Fwy, I’ve got the papers in my portmantyee here. Faugh-a-ballagh! Show me the way to him!”