The Black Forge Mills

by William P. Chipman

The judge sat behind his desk, dignified and thoughtful, as so important a case demanded, while the little prosecuting attorney was more at his ease than on the previous Monday, for there was associated with him now another lawyer of considerably wider legal reputation. At precisely nine o'clock the case of the State vs. Ray Branford was called, and the clerk read again the indictment against the lad, and announced the fact that to this charge the prisoner had pleaded "Not Guilty."

The little attorney then arose, and in a piping voice and with a pompous air proceeded to state what the prosecution hoped to prove, and closed by calling Mr. Shephard, the proprietor of the robbed store, to the witness stand.

He being duly sworn, testified that he had first discovered the burglary on opening his store about six o'clock the Saturday morning before, and that he had at once sent for Captain Gardiner, the chief of the town police, who took the matter in charge. He then described the way in which entrance to the store had been effected, and the kind and amount of goods that had been stolen. He gave a detailed account also of the search he and the police had made for traces of the burglars; of their finding tracks at the rear of the store, a bit of cloth on the edge of the opening in the partition, and later, the coat and tools hidden away under a pile of lumber on the dock. He identified the coat on the table before him as the one they had found, by the rent in its back, of the exact size and shape of the pieces of cloth found on the partition, and also by a place on the right side where the coat had at some former time been torn and mended. He recognized the saw and auger as the tools found with the coat by marks that he had put upon them at the time they were found, and by the bits of wood of the same kind as that of the partition, which were still clinging to them. On his cross-examination he declared that he had no bias or ill-feeling against the prisoner at the bar, and that he knew of no reason why the prisoner should want to injure him. But he as well as others had seen the prisoner on Friday evening wearing the coat that had been found, and this, together with the fact that the prisoner was known to be hanging around the wharf early the next morning without this coat, had led him to have a warrant issued for his arrest. If the prisoner were innocent, no one hoped more than he that the fact would come out at this trial; on the other hand, if he were guilty, he desired that he and his accomplices, if they could be found, might suffer the penalty of the law. He simply asked that justice should be done.

Then Captain Gardiner, the chief of the police, took the stand. From the outset it was evident to all that he, for some reason, held firmly to the belief that Ray was guilty, and that he was determined to convict him if that were possible. It may be that the severe reprimand he had received on Monday afternoon from the town board for his discourtesy to Mr. Carleton and General Squire the day before had created this feeling; or, possibly, he may have felt that his reputation as a skillful and successful officer would be damaged if the boy were not convicted. At any rate, with bitter invective against Ray and his earlier life, he went on to show that it was his own keenness that had discovered the piece of cloth on the partition, the tracks at the rear of the store, and the coat and tools under the lumber. It was, moreover, his own alertness, that had detected Ray on Saturday morning with another coat on, and prying around that very heap of lumber on the docks. He, too, it was, that had noticed that Ray, as soon as he beheld the piece of cloth that had been found, had abruptly left the store and hurried off down the bay. The finding of the coat, to his mind, was the last link necessary to prove that the boy must at least have been in league with the other culprits. The idea that the boy could have been there at the wharf all night without knowing that the burglary was going on was to him simply absurd. In his eagerness to convict the lad he even advanced theories respecting the robbery and the disposal of the stolen goods which had no foundation in fact, and which Mr. Eaton had the right to object to; but for reasons best known to himself he allowed the captain to go on until his story was finished. Then by a few well-directed words in the cross-examination, Mr. Eaton so disconcerted the self-important official, that he became confused and contradictory in his testimony, and finally retired from the stand completely discomfited.

Several witnesses were now introduced to show that Ray had been in the village the night of the burglary; that he wore the coat which had been found under the lumber on the wharf, and that he was seen early the next morning wearing another coat. Then Mr. George Woodhull was called to the stand. He seemed somewhat surprised that the prosecution had called him as a witness, but having been put under oath, he readily admitted that Ray had not arrived at Long Point Farm on the previous Saturday morning until nearly eight o'clock; that he came without the coat he had worn away the evening before; and that he seemed in an unusual thoughtful mood all the rest of the day, as though troubled about something. But the first decided sensation of the trial came when the coat which had been found was placed before him, and he was asked if that, in his judgment, was Ray's coat.

"No, sir!" he promptly answered, "I do not think it is."

"Why not?" asked the little attorney, sharply.

"Because," replied Mr. Woodhull, deliberately, and in a voice that penetrated every part of the court room, "Ray's coat had his name on the back of the collar, and this has no name; then, this coat has some time been torn on the right side and neatly mended, while Ray's coat, when he left the farm on Friday night, had no such mark upon it."

This testimony made a pronounced impression upon the whole audience, for it gave the first hint that had yet been received as to the line of the defense. Up to that moment it had generally been believed that no attempt would be made to show that the coat found was not Ray's; in fact, it was generally supposed that this could not be denied, and that the best the defense could do would be to prove that the boy had lost it previous to the robbery. When, now, Mr. Woodhull so emphatically denied the identity of the coat, the people in the audience looked at each other in amazement, and the witnesses who had sworn so positively just a few moments before that Ray had worn this identical coat now looked as if it had just dawned upon them that there might be two coats of the very same material.

The lawyer associated with the little attorney in the prosecution also seemed to realize that the strongest link in the chain of circumstantial evidence which had been woven around the prisoner was in danger of being broken, for he turned abruptly to the witness, saying: "That will do, sir."