Dardis did not try to draw another word from her on any part of the story. He was artist enough to know that the story was complete in its naïve and tragic simplicity. And he was judge enough of human nature to understand that the jury would remember better and hold more easily her own unthought, clipped expressions than they 264 would any more connected elaborations he might try to make her give.
Lemuel Squires was a narrow man, a born prosecutor. He had always been a useful officer to the railroad powers because he was convinced of the guilt of any prisoner whom it was his business to bring into court. He regarded a verdict of acquittal as hardly less than a personal insult. He denied that there were ever two sides to any case. But his very narrowness now confounded him here. This girl’s story was true. It was astounding, impossible, subversive of all things. But it was true.
His mind, one-sided as it was always, had room for only the one thing. The story was true. He asked her a few unimportant questions, leading nowhere, and let her go. Then he began his summing up to the jury.
It was a half-hearted, wholly futile plea to them to remember the facts by which the prisoner had already been convicted and to put aside the girl’s dramatic story. He was still convinced that the prisoner was guilty. But––the girl’s story was true. His mind was not nimble enough to escape the shock of that fact. He was helpless under it. His pleading was spiritless and wandering while his mind stood aside to grapple with that one astounding thing.
The Judge, however, in charging the jury was troubled by none of these hampering limitations 265 of mind. He had always regarded the taking and discussion of evidence as a rather wearisome and windy business. All democracy was full of such wasteful and time-killing ways of coming to a conclusion. The boy was guilty. The powers who controlled the county had said he was guilty. Why spoil good time, then, quibbling.
He charged the jury that the girl’s testimony was no more credible than that of a dozen other witnesses––which was quite true. All had told the truth as they understood it, and saw it. But he glided smoothly over the one important difference. The girl had seen the act. No other, not even the accused himself, had been able to say that.
He delivered an extemporaneous and daringly false lecture on the comparative force of evidence, intended only to befog the minds of the jurors. But the effect of it was exactly the opposite to that which he had intended, for, whereas they had up to now held a fairly clear view of the things that had been proven by the adroit handling of his facts by the District Attorney, they now forgot all that structure of guilt which he so laboriously built up and remembered only one thing clearly. And that thing was the story of Cynthe Cardinal.
Without leaving their seats, they intimated that they had come to an agreement.
The Judge, glowering dubiously at them, demanded to know what it was.
Jeffrey Whiting stood up.