“Yes, we are safe on that score,” the old man said, encouragingly, to Carson. “I only slipped away for a minute. I won't wait here, but will hurry back and stand guard. God bless you, my boy.” When Dwight had turned towards the door and was moving away, Carson glanced over the crowded room. All eyes were fixed, it seemed to him, anxiously and sympathetically on his face. As he passed through the central aisle to reach the railed-in enclosure where, at his elevated desk, the magistrate sat, gravely consulting with the State solicitor, Carson's mind was gloomily active with the numerous instances in which, to his knowledge, innocent men had been convicted by the complication of circumstantial evidence, in a chair which Braider was solicitously placing near that of Garner, the young man's glance again swept the big room. On the last row of benches sat Linda, Uncle Lewis, and Pete in the company of other negro friends of his. Their fixed and awed facial expressions added to his gloom. Near the railing sat “the gang”—Gordon, Tingle, and Bob Smith—their faces long-drawn. Behind them sat Helen and her father, with Ida Tarpley. Catching Helen's anxious glance, Carson tried to smile lightly as he responded to her bow, but there was something in his act which seemed to him to be empty pretence and rather unworthy of one in his position. Guilty or innocent in the eyes of the law, he told himself he was there to rid his character of the gravest charge that could be made against a human being, and from the indications, as seen by the shrewd Garner, he was not likely to leave the room a free man. He shuddered as he grimly pictured Braider—the feeling, sympathetic Braider—coming to him there before all those eyes and formally placing him under arrest at the order of the court. He sank to the lowest ebb of despair as he pictured his mother's hearing of the news. Almost in a daze Carson sat dumb and blind to the formal proceedings. Like a child, he felt a soothing comfort in the knowledge that he was leaning on such a skilled friend as that of the hardened young lawyer at his side, and yet for the first time in his life he was pitying himself. Things had really gone hard with him. He had tried his best to do the right thing of late, but fate had at last overpowered him. He was losing faith in the impulses which had led him, blind under the blaze of youthful enthusiasm, to that seat here under the cold, accusing eye of the law.
He was drawn out of his lethargy by the clear, ringing, confident voice of the solicitor. It was a strong, an utterly heartless speech, “the gang” thought. Duty to the State and public protection was its key-note. Personally, Mayhew had nothing but the kindliest feeling and strongest admiration for the defendant. He belonged to one of the best and oldest families in the South, and was a man of undaunted courage and remarkable brains. But with all that, Mayhew believed, as he tugged at his heavy mustache and stared with confident eyes at the magistrate, he could show that lurking under the creditable and refined exterior of the defendant was a keenly vindictive nature—a nature that was maddened beyond forbearance by opposition. The solicitor promised to show by competent witnesses, when the matter was brought to trial, that Carson Dwight believed—mark the word believed—without an iota of proof, that Dan Willis had fired upon him in the mob that was attempting to lynch Pete Warren. Believing this, your honor, I say, with no sort of proof, I think the State will have no trouble in establishing the fact that Dwight had sufficient motive for what was done, and that he deliberately and with aforethought went armed with no other intent than to kill Willis. Furthermore, Mayhew could show, he declared, that Dwight had carefully concealed the deed, letting it go out to the world that the finding of the coroner's jury was correct, and making no statement to the contrary till he was driven to it by the encroachments of verifiable rumor and the certainty of adverse action by the grand jury. That being the status of the case, the solicitor could only urge upon the court its duty to hold Carson Dwight on the charge of murder in the first degree.
Deep in his slough of depression, Dwight, looking over the breathless audience, noticed the serious faces he knew and loved. Helen was deathly pale, and her father sat with bowed head, fingering his gold-headed ebony cane. Keith Gordon's face was as full of reproach for what the solicitor had said as that of a grief-stricken woman. Wade Tingle sat flushed with rebellious anger, and Bob Smith, not grasping the full import of the high-sounding words, stared from under his neatly plastered hair like a wondering child at a funeral. It was Mam' Linda's almost savage glare that more firmly fixed Carson's wandering glance. She sat there, her visage full of half-savage passion, her large lip hanging low and quivering, her breast heaving, her eyes gleaming.
Carson had not the heart to follow Garner's weak and inadequate plea as the lawyer stood, his small hands clutched and bloodless behind him. He had not been able, he said, to reach the witnesses he had expected to produce, who would swear that Dan Willis, time after time, had pursued the defendant and made threats against his life, but he felt that a calm statement of Carson Dwight's would be believed, and that—
Here there was a commotion in the room. The bailiff at the door was talking loudly to some one. The magistrate rapped vigorously for order, and in the pause that ensued Pole Baker came striding down the aisle, leading a little woman wearing a black cotton sun-bonnet and dress of the same material. Leaving her standing, Baker approached Garner and whispered in his ear. Then, with a suddenly kindling face, the lawyer turned and whispered to the woman. A moment later he drew himself up to his full height and said, in a clear, confident voice that reached all parts of the room: “Your honor, I have a witness here that I want to have sworn.”
The district-attorney stood up and stared curiously at the woman. “If I'm not mistaken that's Dan Willis's mother,” he said, with a smile. “She is a witness I'm looking for myself.”
“Well, you are welcome to what she'll testify,” Garner dryly retorted.
A moment later the little woman was on the stand, holding her bonnet in her hand, her small, wizened face as colorless as parchment, her black hair brushed as smoothly as patent leather down over her brow and tied in a small, tight knot behind her head.
“Now, Mrs. Willis,” Garner went on, casting a significant glance at Carson, who was gazing at him in growing wonder, “just tell the court in your own way what happened at your house the day your son met his death.”
The room was very still when she began in a low, quivering voice which, gradually steadied itself as she continued.