And the prisoner, leaning forward, in a very low voice, but clear and distinct, answered out, "Not Guilty!"
He was a tall and delicate pale-faced man, with thoughtful grey eyes and a high white forehead. But to Jerry Stokes' experienced gaze all that counted for nothing. He knew his patients well enough to know there are murderers and murderers—the refined and educated as well as the coarse and brutal. Why, he'd turned off square dozens of them, and both sorts, too, equally. No; it wasn't that—and he couldn't say what it was—but as Richard Ogilvy answered "Not Guilty" that morning a thrill ran cold down the hangman's back. He was sure it was true: he felt intuitively certain of it.
From that moment forth, Jerry followed the evidence with the closest interest. He leaned forward in his place, and drank it all in anxiously. People who sat near him remarked that his conduct was disgusting. He was thirsting for a conviction. It was ghastly to see the hangman so intent upon his prey. He seemed to hang on the lips of the witnesses for the prosecution.
But Jerry himself sat on, all unconscious of their criticism. For the very first time in his life, he forgot his trade. He remembered only that a human soul was at stake that day, and that in one glimpse of intuition he had seen its innocence.
Counsel for the Crown piled up a cumulative case, very strong and conclusive against the man Ogilvy. They showed that the prisoner had lived on bad terms with his wife—though through whose fault they had lived so, whether his or hers, wasn't very apparent. They showed that scenes had lately occurred between them. They showed that Ogilvy had bought poison at a chemist's in Kingston on the usual plea, "to get rid of the rats." They showed that Mrs. Ogilvy had died of such poison. Their principal witness was the Napanee doctor, a man named Wade, who attended the deceased in her fatal illness. This doctor was intelligent, and frank, and straightforward; he gave his evidence in the most admirable style—evidence that told dead against the prisoner in every way. At the close of the case for the Crown, the game was up: everybody in court said all was finished: impossible for Ogilvy to rebut such a mass of damning evidence.
Everybody in court—except Jerry Stokes. And Jerry Stokes went home—for it was a two days' trial—much concerned in soul about Richard Ogilvy.
It was something new for Jerry Stokes, this disinterested interest in an accused criminal; and it took hold of him with all the binding and compelling force of a novel emotion. He wrestled and strained with it. All night long he lay awake, and tossed and turned on his bed, and thought of Richard Ogilvy's pale white face, as he stood there, a picture of mute agony, in the court-house. Strange thoughts surged up thick in Jerry Stokes' soul, that had surged up in no other soul among all those actively hostile spectators. The silent suffering in the man's grey eyes had stirred him deeply. A thousand times over, Jerry said to himself, as he tossed and turned, "That man never done it." Now and again he dozed off, and awoke with a start, and each time he woke he found himself muttering in his sleep, with all the profound force of unreasoned conviction, "He never done it! he never done it!"
Next morning, as soon as the court was open, Jerry Stokes was in his place again, craning his bull-neck eagerly. All day long he craned that bull-neck and listened. The public was scandalised now. Jerry Stokes in court! Jerry Stokes scenting blood! He ought to have kept away! This was really atrocious!
Evidence for the defence hung fire sadly. To say the truth, Ogilvy's counsel had no defence at all to offer, except an assurance that he didn't do it. They confined themselves to suggesting a possible alternative here, and a possible alternative there. Mrs. Ogilvy might have taken the rat-poison by mistake; or this person might have given it her somehow unawares, or that person might have had some unknown grudge against her. Jerry Stokes sat and listened with a sickening heart. The man in the dock was innocent, he felt sure; but the case—why, the case was going dead against him!
