The next moment Glover had stepped down from the stand and resumed his place at the far end of the long table. Dayton leaned across to his client. "Jarvis?" he inquired, his pencil poised above his pad. "Granville Jarvis; is that the name?"
The light had gone out of Kenwick's eyes and the fire out of his voice. He had crumpled down in his chair like a man suddenly overcome with a spinal disease. He looked at Dayton with dead eyes.
"The name," he said bitterly, "is Judas Iscariot!"
CHAPTER XVIII
It was two o'clock before court, which had been dismissed for lunch after Richard Glover's testimony, convened again. During the noon hour a tray containing the only tempting food which the prisoner had seen since his incarceration was brought up to his cell. It had become apparent to the jailer that he had friends, and perhaps he was moved thereby to a tardy compassion. But Kenwick, despite Dayton's admonition to "Brace up and eat a good meal," waved it indifferently aside.
"I'm done for," he said simply. "I don't see how any twelve men could hear the evidence that was presented this morning and find me innocent. And by the time Jarvis gets through telling anything he likes, and proving it——Well, it appears that every person who has been connected in any way with me since this trouble fell upon me has taken advantage of my misfortune to enrich himself. I don't care much now what they do with me. When you lose your faith in humanity it's time to die. I'm no religious fanatic, Dayton, but for these last two months I've thanked God on my knees every night of my life for having brought me back into the light. Now I wish that I had died instead."
Dayton made no further effort to rouse him from his despair. For although not of a sensitive or particularly intuitive temperament himself, he had come to realize the utter impossibility of finding this other man in his trouble. "You don't seem to have much faith in me," was all he said as he made some notes on the back of an envelope. But he finally induced his client to eat some of the food upon his tray and after the first few mouthfuls Kenwick was surprised to find that he was ravenously hungry.
"That's something like," the lawyer approved, as they made their way back through the court-house grounds. "Now you're good for another three hours."
It hadn't seemed possible to Kenwick that he was, that his nerves could stand the strain of hours and hours more of this, and there was no assurance that the ordeal would end to-day or to-morrow. But Dayton's easy assurance gave him a new grip upon himself.