Jack shook his head slowly, and said, with an evident effort:
"No. I don't care."
Rankin did not know what to make of him; but, finally, he said:
"Well, if you won't have any person better, I will sit there, and if I see my way to anything I'll perhaps say a word. You do not object to my doing this, do you?" Jack's answer, or rather the motion of his head, might have meant anything, but Rankin took it to mean assent.
At half-past nine, Jack was led from the cell outside to the court-room by two policemen who seemed partly to support him.
A thrill ran through his old friends when they saw him. His face was ghastly, and his jaw had dropped in an enervated way that gave him the appearance of a man who had been fairly cornered and had "thrown up the sponge" in despair. He had not been brushed or combed for two nights and a day. He still wore his old, dirty sailing clothes. The sailor's sheath-knife attached to his leather belt had been removed by the police. His partial stupor was construed to be dogged sullenness, and it assisted in giving every one a thoroughly bad impression as to his innocence.
After he was placed in the dock he sat down and absently picked at some blisters on his hands, until the magistrate spoke to him, and then the policemen ordered him to stand up. When he stood thus, partly raised above the spectators, his eyes were lusterless and stolid and he looked vacantly in the direction of the magistrate.
"John Cresswell, it is charged against you that you did, on the 25th day of August last, at the city of Toronto, in the county of York, feloniously steal, take, and carry away fifty thousand dollars, the property of the Victoria Bank of Canada," etc.
Rankin saw that Jack did not comprehend what was going on. He got up, and was going to say something when the magistrate continued:
"Do you wish that the charge against you shall be tried by me or with a jury at the next assizes, or by some other court of competent jurisdiction?"