The prisoner was unmoved throughout the trial. Not a shade of fear disturbed the immobility of his features. Calm and self-possessed, he saw the threads of evidence woven into strands, and those strands twisted into coils as inextricable as they were condemnatory, and he looked out upon the stern and frigid faces of the men who were to determine his fate with a gaze more defiant than any he encountered. There were those near him who were melted to tears at the revelation of his cruelty and bloodthirstiness; there were even those among his friends who betrayed in their blanched lineaments their own horror at his crimes; but he, the central figure, equally indifferent to both, sat in their midst, as inflexible as an image of stone.
COLONEL WILBUR F. SANDERS
Principal prosecutor of George Ives
The scene, by its associations and objects, could not be otherwise than terribly impressive to all who were actors in it; it wanted none of the elements, either of epic force or tragic fury, which form the basis of our noblest poems. A whole community, burning under repeated outrages, sitting in trial on one of an unknown number of desperate men, whose strength, purposes, even whose persons, were wrapped in mystery! How many of that surging crowd now gathered around the crime-covered miscreant, might rush to his rescue the moment his doom should be pronounced, no one could even conjecture. No man felt certain that he knew the sentiments of his neighbor. None certainly knew that the adherents of the criminal were weaker, either in numbers or power, than the men of law and order. It was night, too, before the testimony closed; and in the pale moonlight, and glare of the trial fire, suspicion transformed honest men into ruffians, and filled the ranks of the guilty with hundreds of recruits.
The jury retired to deliberate upon their verdict. An oppressive feeling, almost amounting to dread, fell upon the now silent and anxious assemblage. Every eye was turned upon the prisoner, seemingly the only person unaffected by surrounding circumstances. Moments grew into hours. “What detains the jury? Why do they not return? Is not the case clear enough?” These questions fell upon the ear in subdued tones, as if their very utterance breathed of fear. In less than half an hour they came in with solemn faces, with their verdict,—Guilty!—but one juror dissenting.
“Thank God for that!” “A righteous verdict!” and other like expressions broke from the crowd, while on the outer edge of it, amidst mingled curses, execrations, and howls of indignation, and the quick click of guns and revolvers, one of the ruffians exclaimed,
“The murderous, strangling villains dare not hang him, at any rate.”
Just at this moment a motion was made to the miner “that the report be received, and the jury discharged,” which, with some little opposition from the prisoner’s lawyers, was carried.
Some of the crowd now became clamorous for an adjournment; but failing in this, the motion was then made “that the assembly adopt as their verdict the report of the committee.”
The prisoner’s counsel sprung to their feet to oppose the motion, but it was carried by such a large majority, that the assemblage seemed at once to gather fresh life and encouragement for the discharge of the solemn duty which it imposed. There was a momentary lull in the proceedings, when the people found that they had reached the point when the execution of the criminal was all that remained to be done. They realized that the crisis of the trial had arrived. On the faces of all could be read their unexpressed anxiety concerning the result. What man among them possessed the courage and commanding power equal to the exigencies of the occasion!