"Don't you think he's guilty?"
"Oh, I don't know nothing at all about that. Some of the very worst murders ever I have known have been done by some of the very nicest chaps ever you met--when you come to talk to 'em, I mean. I don't know how it is, but so it is. He'll be hung--safe to. That's where they'll hang him. You can't see it from where we are, but there's a little yard in there where they build the gallows. I expect I shall have the charge of him in the condemned cell. I generally do have. I've hung 'em before to-day; but it's not a nice job."
Poor, dear Tommy! It made me go queer all over to hear the man talk of him like that. What a funny world it is? Or is it the people in it who are funny?
When the trial began the court was like a theatre. I got in early--for reasons of my own. I wanted a particular place, and succeeded in obtaining the object of my heart's desire.
I had had a peep in at the court on the opening day of the assizes. What I wanted was a position in which I should not face the prisoner. I found that the prisoners were placed in a sort of railed enclosure. Their feet were about on a level with the lawyers' heads. On one side of this enclosure was a kind of pew. So long as the occupants kept their seats it was impossible for any one in the enclosure to even guess at their identity. I soon saw that a seat in this pew was exactly what I wanted. If I wore a thick veil, and made certain changes in my attire, Tommy would never dream that the woman whom he was charged with having murdered was actually sitting within reach of his hand, a spectator of the trial.
When I reached the court the usher--or whoever it was--wanted me to sit on the bench, on a line with the judge and immediately facing the prisoner's dock. He assured me that that part of the court was specially reserved for ladies who were ticket-holders, and that it was quite impossible that they could be allowed to sit anywhere else. This impossibility I rather doubted, and when I presented him with two beautifully bright, new yellow sovereigns he seemed to doubt it too.
"I don't want to be conspicuous," I explained. "I just want to see everything without being seen."
Nothing could have possibly been truer or more reasonable. Possibly those two sovereigns aided that usher to see both the truth and the reason. Anyhow, he showed me into actually the seat I wanted.
Very soon the place was crowded. No end of ladies graced the bench. Some of them must--unlike modest little me!--have come to be seen as well as to see. Certainly they were dressed for show. The court wore quite an air of fashion.
Among the crowd, but not on the bench, was Tommy's wife. She came in with an elderly lady and gentleman, whom I took to be her father and mother, or else Tommy's--I could not make my mind up which--and a younger gentleman, who still was pretty well on in years. I had no doubt that he was Tommy's solicitor. As Mrs. Tennant came in two of the barristers, who were sitting among a heap of others at a table, stood up and shook hands with her. I found out afterwards that, as I suspected at the time, they were Tommy's counsel. Somebody must have known who she was, because, directly she appeared, quite a buzz of whispering went round the court. The women on the bench leaned towards each other, and stared and did everything but point at her. They might have been ladies--gentlewomen, as my old mother used to have it, they were not. She removed her veil and looked at them--just once, and that was all. She looked very sweet and pale and troubled, but grit to the finger-ends.