"I do not understand the question," he said. "The people were intimately known to me, but were mere acquaintances of the prisoner."
There came the speech of the prosecuting counsel. This young man, of good education and good prospects, had gambled recklessly with another man, and had found himself in an impossible position. He might have gone, gentlemen of the jury, with confidence to this guardian, who was his best and his dearest friend, and have appealed to him to liquidate his debt; instead of that it was evident that he had determined to try conclusions with the man who held these incriminating scraps of paper. What passed behind the closed doors of the unfortunate man's rooms it was impossible to say; they could only conjecture. It must, however, be suggested that the prisoner, terrified at the thought of the position in which he had placed himself, had gone late at night to the rooms of the man to whom he owed this considerable sum of money; they might imagine him pleading with that man, then threatening and demanding, then endeavouring to obtain by force that which he could obtain in no other way. It might be urged that these papers had been found upon the dead man, but surely that could easily be accounted for. Even the most callous could scarcely stoop to search the blood-stained thing that lay in that quiet room at night.
My counsel did the best for me that he could; he threw himself, alike with me, upon the mercy of the court. I had refused to say anything; he confessed that he was utterly in the dark as to my motive. But he could plead my youth, and the fact that Gavin Hockley was a bigger and apparently a stronger man, with a reputation that was not too clean. Was it not possible that these two hot-headed men—the prisoner a mere boy—had got into some quarrel, and had attacked each other without thought; had not a weapon been found in the hand of the dead man? This could be no question of murder; there was nothing deliberate about it at all.
I remember that the judge summed up dead against me. He disagreed with the suggestion that the act was not premeditated; there were the various attempts I had made to get the address of my victim; the determination I had shown; my threats to kill the man, if I could only stand face to face with him. The duty of the jury was clear; unless they had any reasonable doubt there was but one verdict they could return. It was all short and sharp and direct to the point; the jury went out of court, and I remember that the little innocent-faced one looked back at me pityingly as he went. I almost called out to him not to mind.
It did not take them long to consider their verdict; I was hurried back into court within a few minutes. The usual formal questions were asked; and for a moment my heart beat a little quicker as I heard the verdict given. It was the one I had already given myself.
"Guilty!"
For a moment there was a sort of mild tumult in court; people whispering and jostling about, and here and there a voice raised—either in protest, or in condemnation of me; I do not know which. Then silence; and another figure on the bench, a little behind the judge, adjusting a black square of cloth upon his wig. I remember thinking, in an absurd way, that he had not put it on quite straight.
The judge had already lifted his hand impressively, and had spoken my name, when the voice of a woman rang out clearly in the gallery above me. It was as though some tender-hearted creature there could not bear that this thing should be done.
"Oh, God!—no—no—no!"