The evidence, being briefly summed up, ran as follows: Robert, or, as he was more familiarly called, Bob Sullivan, while in a state of intoxication, quarreled with and lost his last cent to Jack Wilder, a professional sharper. Awaking the morning after his debauch, to find himself beggared, he had sworn, in the presence of several witnesses, to get his money back or kill the man who had outwitted him. Accordingly, he had set out to meet Wilder on his return from a neighboring town, and next day the body of the latter was found in a lonely stretch of the road, with a knife sticking in his heart.
Sullivan had been obliged to admit that he had met his enemy near this spot, and that they had a stormy interview, but maintained that they parted without blows, as Wilder promised him to restore his money. There was no tittle of circumstantial evidence wanting to confirm the appearance of Sullivan’s guilt, and even the attorney for the defense was privately convinced of the falsity and absurdity of his client’s plea of “Not guilty.”
The judge, a large, pompous man, having instructed the jury in his most severe and autocratic manner, busied himself with some papers, and did not deign a glance to the assemblage below. It was, as could readily be observed, a gathering of small tradespeople and farmers. Here and there the keen face of a lawyer or that of a stranger from the neighboring city stood out boldly from the sea of honest vacuity which surrounded it.
The prisoner sat with his face buried in his hands, which had lost their former tan, and were pale and trembling. Near him was his wife, hugging a sickly babe to her breast, and showing in her wild eyes, twitching mouth, and every line of her meager, stooping figure, the terror which held her in its grasp. A breathless silence was upon that audience in the shabby courtroom; even the baby had ceased its fretful wailing, and the buzz of a bluebottle fly entangled in a spider’s web in the window was the only sound that broke the stillness.
Five minutes passed, ten, twenty, and still the jury had not come. A murmur of impatience began to be heard, and presently the judge beckoned the sheriff to him, whispered a few words in his ear, and saw him depart through the same door which apparently swallowed up the jurors. The sheriff made his way through several gloomy passages into a large, light room, where he inquired of the foreman if they were not yet agreed.
“No, we ain’t!” gruffly responded that functionary. “There’s eleven of us for hangin’, but Conway, there, won’t hear to it. He wants to clear the feller out an’ out, an’ says he’ll stay with us till kingdom come before he’ll budge an inch.”
Giles Conway, the man whose obstinacy was causing such unnecessary delay, was seated rather apart from the rest, and wore the brown jeans and soft hat which marked him a farmer. Even had not the absence of any attempt at foppishness proclaimed his caste, there was something about him which insensibly connected itself in the observer’s mind with the free winds and untrammeled sunshine of the country. He was much the same color from his head to his feet, for eyes, skin, hair, and beard were alike brown, and only the deep lines on his firm, squarely cut face showed that he was no longer young. Just at present he seemed in no wise disconcerted by the wrathful impatience of his associates, but pushing his felt hat farther back on his head, and settling himself more comfortably in his wooden chair, said slowly:
“No, friends, you won’t ever get me to hand over a man to the gallows on such evidence as that, an’ there ain’t no special use of cussin’ about it, for it won’t do a bit of good.”
“Oh, but that is such foolishness!” broke in one of the group. “Here’s all this evidence, that no man in his senses could doubt, a-goin’ to prove that Bob Sullivan killed Jack Wilder, and here you sit like a bump on a log, and won’t listen to none of it.”
“That’s just it,” replied Conway. “You all think that evidence like that orter hang a man, but if you’d seen as much of that sort of thing as I have, you’d think different. I ain’t much of a talker, but maybe you wouldn’t mind listenin’ to a case of this kind I happen to know about, an’ maybe the time I’m done—an’ it won’t take me long to tell it—you’ll see why I don’t want to hang a young fellow I’ve known nearly all my life for somethin’ that very likely he didn’t do.