“And what of yourself?”
“As for me, as for me,” he added, struggling with the emotion that surged in his voice, “in the sight of Him that searcheth all hearts I have acquittal. I have sought it long and with tears of Him before whom we are all as chaff.”
“Away with him, the blasphemer!” cried Justice Millet. “Know where you are, sir. This is an assembly of Christians. Dare you call God to acquit you of your barbarous crimes?”
The people in the court took up the judge's word and broke out into a tempest of irrepressible groans. They were the very people who had cheered a week ago.
Sim cowered in a corner of the box, with his lank fingers in his long hair.
Ralph looked calmly on. He was not to be shaken now. There was one way in which he could quell that clamor and turn it into a tumult of applause, but that way should not be taken. He could extricate himself by criminating his dead father, but that he should never do. And had he not come to die? Was not this the atonement he had meant to make? It was right, it was right, and it was best. But what of Sim; must he be the cause of Sim's death also? “This poor old man,” he repeated, when the popular clamor had subsided, “he is innocent.”
Sim would have risen, but Ralph guessed his purpose and kept him to his seat. At the same moment Willy Ray among the people was seen struggling towards the witness-bar. Ralph guessed his purpose and checked him, too, with a look. Willy stood as one petrified. He saw only one of two men for the murderer—Ralph or his father.
“Let us go together,” whispered Sim; and in another moment the judge (Justice Millet) was summing up. He was brief; the evidence of the woman Rushton and of the recovered warrant proved everything. The case was as clear as noonday. The jurors need not leave the box.
Without retiring, the jury found a verdict of guilty against both prisoners.
The crier made proclamation of silence, and the awful sentence of death was pronounced.