I can close my eyes and recall that picture even to this hour, but never without a feeling of overwhelming melancholy; so strong are the impressions some things leave upon us.
After a while there was a stir within and some one said that the Court had sustained the objection of the defence and declined to permit the recall of the defendant, and that Littell was about to begin his final argument, and so I hurried back. He was already on his feet in the centre of the room and facing the jury. He had neither books nor memoranda by him and evidently relied upon his memory for all he meant to say.
His voice was deep and serious when he began to speak:
"I have been practising my profession, as your Honor knows, for forty years and this is the first as it is the last time that I appear before a criminal tribunal; only a sense of imperative duty as a lawyer and as a man has brought me here to-day; could I with a clear conscience have escaped this solemn duty, I would have done so, but a call higher than has ever appealed to me before has summoned me to the side of a man who is being wronged, and therefore it is I am here.
"I am without the resources of my brother lawyers accustomed to practise in this court and I have, therefore, no facts to submit, except those presented by the witnesses for the State, and no evidence to offer, except that of the prisoner himself.
"I believe the evidence of the State's witnesses to be substantially true and therefore have made no effort to cast doubt upon it, and I believe the testimony of the prisoner to be true, and, therefore, I rely upon it."
Then in a more conversational tone he addressed himself to the jury.
"The unusual feature of this case," he said, "is that while the testimony of the State would seem to make out the guilt of the prisoner, his own story makes out his innocence, and yet both are uncontradicted and are consistent with each other. I wish you to keep this in mind, because, if it be as I say and the story of the prisoner be not incredible, you cannot convict him; you must remember it is not the duty of the defence to prove the innocence of the accused, but that of the prosecution to establish his guilt.
"It is going to be my effort now to demonstrate to you the truth of what I have said by an analysis of the evidence, and then I am going to do what is more than is demanded of me as counsel for the defendant,—I am going to try and point out to you not only the possibility of its having been some one else than the accused who committed this deed, but who that some one was."
Then he took up the evidence piece by piece and analyzed it. Every doubt, every possibility in the case, which he and I had so often discussed together, was developed and presented to the jury in its strongest phase, till there appeared to be left no possible theory of the crime that could make consistent all the facts.