The snow was now falling heavily, and the hour was late, but the courthouse was thronged. It was a little place—a plain box, bare, featureless, and chill, with walls, roof and seats of wood, and floor of hard earth. Four short benches were raised, step above step, against the farthest side, and on the highest of these the Bishop sat, with three of his colleagues on each of the three rows beneath him. The prisoner stood on a broad stool to the right, and the witnesses on a like stool to the left. A wooden bar crossed the room about midway, and in the open space between that and the door the spectators were crowded together. The place was lighted by candles, and some were fixed to the walls, others were held by ushers on the end of long sticks, and a few were hung to the roof rafters by hemp ropes tied about their middle. The floor ran like a stream, and the atmosphere was full of the vapor of the snow that was melting on the people's clothes. Nothing could be ruder than the courthouse, but the Court that sat there observed a rule of procedure that was almost an idolatry of form.
The prisoner was called by the name of Jason, son of Stephen Orry, and having answered in a voice so hollow that it seemed to come out of the earth beneath him, he rose to his place. His attitude was dull and impassive, and he seemed hardly to see the restless crowd that murmured at sight of him. His tall figure stooped, there was a cloud on his strong brow, and a slow fire in his bloodshot eyes, and his red hair, long as a woman's, hung in disordered masses down his worn cheeks to his shoulders. The Bishop, a venerable prelate of great age, looked at him and thought, "That man's heart is dead within him."
The spokesman of the Court was a [middle-aged] man, who was short, had little piercing eyes, a square brush of iron-gray hair that stood erect across the top of his corded forehead, and a crisp, clear utterance, like the crackle of a horse's hoofs on the frost.
Jason was charged with an attempt to take the life of Michael Sunlocks, first President of the second Republic. He did not plead and had no defence, and the witnesses against him spoke only in answer to the leading questions of the judges.
The first of the witnesses was Greeba herself, and her evidence, given in English, was required to be interpreted. All her brave strength was now gone. She trembled visibly. Her eyes were down, her head was bent, her face was half-hidden by the hood of a cloak she wore, and her tones were barely audible. She had little to say. The prisoner had forced his way into Government House, and there, to her own face, had threatened to take the life of her husband. In plain words he had done so, and then made show of going in pursuit of her husband that he might carry out his design.
"Wait," said the Bishop, "your husband was not present?"
"No," said Greeba.
"There was, therefore, no direct violence?"
"None."
"And the whole sum of the prisoner's offence, so far as you know of it, lies in the use of the words that you have repeated?"