The jury was called. Florence, studying their faces as they came shambling forward, was surprised and relieved to find there not a single man who was hostile to her; not one of Black Blevens’ men was on that jury. She caught her breath as the true meaning of it came to her. George Sergeant, the deputy, was her friend. He had seen to it that she had the proper sort of a jury. A lump came into her throat. It is good, at such a time as this, to know that one has friends. The very fact that she had demanded a jury trial had perhaps saved the day for her.
The details of the case arranged, a lawyer arose to open the case. It was Florence’s lawyer, provided not by herself, but by Ransom Turner and his men.
It was a beautiful and wonderful speech that the young lawyer made. A product of the mountain, born and raised far up in the hills, he had been helped to his earlier education by just such a school as the girls had been teaching.
“An outrage! A shame and a blight to Laurel Creek’s good name!” he exclaimed eloquently. “You all know what these summer schools have meant to us and to our children. Good hearted, generous people of education and refinement come to our mountains to help our children, and how do we repay them? Arrest them for carrying concealed weapons! Arrest a woman for that! And what was it that this lady did? She put a twenty-two pistol in her pocket after she failed to shoot a squirrel. A pistol, did I say? Really a little rifle. A long barrel and a handle. Attach a stock to it and it’s a rifle.
“Concealed weapons!” his voice was filled with scorn. “You couldn’t kill a man with that! A twenty-two! Concealed weapons! If I were to search this crowd to-day I could find a hundred deadlier weapons on the persons who sit before me!” There was a sudden shuffling of the uneasy feet of startled mountaineers.
“Concealed weapons!” he went on. “I’ve a more deadly one in my own pocket!” He drew a large clasp knife from his pocket and opened it. “I could kill you quicker with that than with a twenty-two.” He put the knife back in his pocket.
“And yet we arrest a woman, a girl really, who has come among us to help us. As a reward we arrest her! Will you honorable jurymen place a blight on the name of such a one by saying she is guilty of a crime? Something tells me you will not.”
As the young lawyer sat down there was a stir in the room, a whispering that came near to applause, but the bronze faces of the jurymen never changed. Nor had they changed when, after hearing the Justice give his reasons why the girl should be found guilty, they left the room to retire to the shade of a distant beach tree.
It was a tense situation that followed. There was no conversation. To many in the room a sentence of “guilty” would mean the end of their hopes of a winter school worthy of the name.
“If only we can beat old Black Blevens in this trial,” Ransom Turner was whispering to his henchmen. “Hit’s likely there’s men who’ll vote right in the school election this afternoon. It’s a chance, though. It’s a plumb uncertain one. Can’t tell next to nothin’ what men’ll do.”