The Graysons Part 28

The sheriff was very active in the latter part of the night in telling his story and in making a display of zeal. It was he who had taken time by the forelock in telling the judge all about the events of the night; how his door had been beaten in by a great mob; how he had been rudely knocked down and choked until he was almost insensible; and how pistols had been c.o.c.ked and placed against his head. Then he told of the coming of the second mob. He did not know which way Tom had been taken, or whether he had been hanged or not, but he had sent the deputy to make inquiries.

In making an examination of the prison after daylight, Sheriff Plunkett found the keys of the jail inside of the hall-way, as though they had been thrown in at the broken-down window. When he went to force the court-house door, the key belonging to it was found lying on the doorstep; and when on opening the door he saw Tom with his manacles on, awaiting him, his surprise was complete.

"I thought you'd been hung," he said.

"Not yet," said Tom, grimly.

"Say, where did that mob come from that got you out?"

"You can't question me," said Tom. "I'm not a witness to-day; I'm a prisoner."

Many of the excited people, moved by the restive longings of a vague curiosity, had followed the sheriff into the court-room, and the news of Tom's presence there soon spread throughout the village. There were already all sorts of contradictory and exciting rumors in the streets about the events of the preceding night; women let their breakfast coffee boil over while they discussed the affair across back fences; men almost forgot to eat anything in their eagerness for news; country people were flocking in by all the roads and listening to all sorts of contradictory tales told by the villagers. When it became known that Tom was alive and awaiting his trial there was a general rush to secure seats, and the court-room was filled long before the bell in its belfry had announced the hour for the trial to begin.

XXVI

CIRc.u.mSTANTIAL EVIDENCE

At last the sheriff's new deputy went up the court-house stairs, and pulled away on the rope that rattled the bell in the belfry--a bell that uttered its notes in irregular groups, now pausing for breath, and now sending one hurried stroke clattering hard on the heels of another. Its clanking had no more dignity than the words of a gossip eagerly tattling small news. While the bell was yet banging, Judge Watkins's iron-gray head and stooped shoulders appeared; he pushed his way slowly through the press, his brows contracted in impatience at finding even the physical progress of the court obstructed by the vulgar. The people squeezed themselves as nearly flat as possible in the endeavor to make way for his Honor, of whom they were as much in awe as school-boys of a stern master. Bob McCord, erect in the aisle, was an island in the very channel, and the most serious obstacle to the judge's pa.s.sage; nor did it help things for Bob to turn sidewise, for he was equally obtrusive in all his dimensions. The judge was a good deal ruffled in his endeavors to pull by him.

"I wish I _wuz_ littler, Jedge," said Bob, with a fearless laugh that startled the bystanders, "but I can't seem to take myself in another eench."

The dyspeptic judge was not without a sense of humor. It would be a derogation from his dignity to say that he smiled at Bob's apology; but certainly there was a little relaxation of his brows, and a less severe set to his lips, when he finally edged past and left the crowd to close around Big Bob again.

The judge began the session by ordering the sheriff to bring in the grand jury. This in turn was no easy task; but at length that body succeeded in descending the stairs, defiling through the aisle, and getting into the jury box. In a few words, precise and tart, the judge charged the grand jurymen to inquire into two lawless attacks which had been made on the sheriff during the night; into the conduct of the sheriff; and into the evidently insecure condition of the county jail.

Then, when the members of the grand inquest had reluctantly made their painful way up the stairs to their room overhead, the judge called the case of _The People of the State of Illinois versus Thomas Grayson, Junior_, and there was a hush in the crowded court-room.

Tom sat regarding the crowd with such feelings as a gladiator doomed to mortal combat might have had in looking on the curious spectators in the Coliseum. Mrs. Grayson and Barbara had been provided with chairs within the bar; but on his mother and sister Tom did not dare to let his eyes rest. He saw, however, without looking directly at them, that little Janet was standing by Barbara, and that his uncle sat with crest-fallen face by his mother's side, and that his Aunt Charlotte had not come at all. Just outside of the bar, but immediately behind Mrs. Grayson, so as to form one of the group, stood Hiram Mason, erect and unblushing. One of the landmarks on which Tom's gaze rested oftenest was the burly form and round, ruddy face of Big Bob McCord, half way between the judge and the door. And at one of the open windows there presently appeared the lank countenance of Jake Hogan, who had climbed up from the outside, with the notion that he was somehow bound to supervise the administration of public justice. He managed with difficulty to get perching-room on the window-sill. Into two of the raised back seats a group of women had squeezed themselves to their last density, and among them, singular and conspicuous as she always was, sat Rachel Albaugh.

Tom's was not the only eye that observed her; the lawyers from other counties were asking one another who she was, and she had even attracted the attention of the judge himself; for a gallant interest in good-looking women lingers late in a Virginia gentleman, no matter how austere his mold. At a pause in the preliminary proceedings the judge spoke to the clerk, sitting just below and in front of him, at a raised desk.

"Magill, who is that girl?" he asked.

"Which one, Judge?" queried Magill, pretending to be in doubt.

"You needn't look so innocent. Of course I mean the one a modest man can't look at without being a little ashamed of himself. You know her well enough, I'm sure."

"I s'pose yer Honor manes John Albaugh's daughter," said Magill. "She's the one that's at the bottom of all this row, they say."

As soon as the judge heard that Rachel's beauty had something to do with the case in hand he fell back into his official reserve, as though he felt a scruple that to talk about her, or even to take note of her beauty, might be, in some sort, a receiving of evidence not properly before the court.

The jury was very soon impaneled, for in that day entire ignorance of the matter in hand was not thought indispensable to a wise decision.

Lincoln made no objection to any of the names drawn for jurymen except that of Abijah Grimes, of Broad Run Township. The exclusion of Bijy's open countenance from the jury box was another blow to Jake Hogan's faith in the inst.i.tutions of the land. His brow visibly darkened; here was one more sign that a rich man's nephew could not be punished, and that a poor man hadn't no kind uv a chance in sech a dodrotted country.

No time was spent in an opening speech; the preliminary oratory, by which our metropolitan barristers consume the time of an indulgent court and make a show of earning their preposterous fees, was rarely indulged in that simpler land and time. The fees paid, indeed, would not have justified the making of two speeches.

No portion of the crowd tucked into the four walls of the Moscow court-house showed more interest in the trial than the members of the bar. The unsolved mystery that hung about Lincoln's line of defense, the absence of any witnesses in Tom's behalf, the neglect of all the ordinary precautions, such as the seeking of a change of venue, produced a kind of flurry of expectation inside of the bar; and the lawyers in their blue sparrow-tail coats with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, which const.i.tuted then a kind of professional uniform, moved about with as much animation as uneasy jay-birds, to which the general effect of their costume gave them a sort of family likeness. Their attention was divided, it is true; for when a member of the bar did succeed in settling himself into a chair, which he always canted back on its hind legs, he was pretty sure to get into a position that would enable him to get a glance now and then at the face of Rachel Albaugh, who was interesting, not only for her beauty, but on account of her supposed relation to the case actually before the court. Never had Rachel's l.u.s.trous eyes seemed finer, never had her marvelous complexion shown a tint more delicious; her interest in the case lent animation to her expression, and her att.i.tude of listening set off the graceful turn of her features.

The prosecuting attorney called Henry Miller to prove that Tom had been irritated with Lockwood at Albaugh's, but Henry did what he could for Tom, by insisting that it didn't "amount to anything" as a quarrel; it was "only a huff," he said. The next witness called was the nervous young man who had stood balancing himself on the threshold of Wooden & Snyder's store when Tom had threatened Lockwood, in paying back the money borrowed to discharge his gambling debt. He was a habitual gossip, and the story lost nothing from his telling. He did not forget to mention with evident pleasure that Rachel Albaugh's name had been used in that quarrel. At this point Rachel, finding too many eyes turned from the witness to the high seat at the back of the room, lowered her green veil.

Then the carpenter who had bought a three-cornered file on the morning of Tom's outburst against Lockwood also swore to the details of that affair as he remembered them, and the villager who had come in to buy nails to repair his garden fence gave a third version of the quarrel; but Snyder, the junior proprietor of the store, told the incident as it was colored by his partisanship for Lockwood and in a way the most damaging to Tom. He swore that Lockwood was really afraid of Tom, and that at Lockwood's suggestion he had himself got Blackman to speak to Tom's uncle about it. The young men followed who had heard Tom say, as he left town after his break with his uncle, that George Lockwood was the cause of all his troubles, and that Lockwood "had better not get in his way again, if he knew what was good for him."

Lincoln sat out that forenoon without making a note, without raising an objection, without asking the witnesses a question, and without a book or a sc.r.a.p of paper before him. He did not break silence at all, except to waive the cross-examination of each witness. The impression made in Tom's favor by his voluntary appearance at the trial, when he might perhaps have got away, was by this time dissipated, and the tide set now overwhelmingly against him; and to this tide his self-contained lawyer had offered not the slightest opposition. It was a serious question even among the lawyers whether or not Lincoln had given up the case. But if he had given up the case, why did he not fight on every small point, as any other lawyer would have done, for the sake of making a show of zeal?

To Allen, the public prosecutor, there was something annoying and ominous in Lincoln's silence; something that made him apprehensive of he knew not what.

When the court took its noon recess Barbara and her mother were in utter despondency. It seemed to them that Lincoln was letting the case go by default, while the prosecuting attorney was full of energetic activity.

"Abra'm," said Mrs. Grayson, intercepting Lincoln as he pa.s.sed out of the bar with his hat drawn down over his anxious brows, "ain't ther'

nothin' you kin do for Tom? Can't you show 'em that he never done it?"

"I'll do whatever I can, Aunt Marthy, but you must leave it to me." So saying, he quickly left her and pushed on out of the door, while his learned brethren gathered into a group within the bar, and unanimously agreed in condemning his neglect of every opportunity to break the force of the evidence against Tom. Why had he not objected to much of it, why had he not cross-questioned, why did he not ask for a change of venue yesterday?

When the sheriff and his deputy, at the close of this forenoon session, pa.s.sed out of the court-house with Tom, there was a rush of people around and in front of them. Men and boys climbed up on wagons, tree stumps, and whatever afforded them a good view of the criminal. For the most part the people were only moved by that heartless curiosity which finds a pleasurable excitement in the sight of other people's woes, but there was also very manifest an increasing resentment toward Tom, and not a little of that human ferocity which is easily awakened in time of excitement and which reminds us of a sort of second cousinship that subsists between a crowd of men and a pack of wolves--or between a pack of men and a crowd of wolves.

When Tom found himself at length landed within the friendly prison walls, out of sight and hearing of the unfeeling crowd, he was in the deepest dejection. For what, indeed, that could happen now would be sufficient to turn back such a tide of popular condemnation? Barbara came to him presently with a dinner more relishable than that which the sheriff was accustomed to serve to prisoners, and all the way to the jail idle people had strolled after her; and though no one treated her with disrespect, she could hear them saying, "That's his sister," and their voices were neither sympathetic nor friendly. When she set down the tray on one of the stools in front of Tom, she kept her eyes averted from his, lest he should detect the despondency that she knew herself to be incapable of hiding. On his part, Tom made a feint to eat the food, for Barbara's sake. But after examining first one tid-bit and then another, essaying to nibble a little first at this and then at that, he got up abruptly and left the whole.

"'T isn't any use, Barb," he said, huskily. "I can't eat."

And Barbara, knowing how much need her brother had for all his self-control, did not trust herself to speak, but took up the tray and went out again, leaving Tom, when the deputy had locked the door, sitting alone on the bench with his head between his hands.

XXVII

LIGHT IN A DARK PLACE

The people who had seats in the court-room were, for the most part, too wise in their generation to vacate them during the noon recess. Jake Hogan clambered down from his uncomfortable window-roost for a little while, and Bob McCord took a plunge into the grateful fresh air, but both got back in time to secure their old points of observation. The lawyers came back early, and long before the judge returned the ruddy-faced Magill was seated behind his little desk, facing the crowd and pretending to write. He was ill at ease; the heart of the man had gone out to Tom. He never for a moment doubted that Tom killed Lockwood, but then a sneak like Lockwood "richly desarved it," in Magill's estimation. Judge Watkins's austere face a.s.sumed a yet more severe expression; for though pity never interfered with justice in his nature, it often rendered the old man unhappy, and therefore more than usually irascible.

There was a painful pause after the judge had taken his seat and ordered the prisoner brought in. It was like a wait before a funeral service, but rendered ten times more distressing by the element of suspense. The judge's quill pen could be heard scratching on the paper as he noted points for his charge to the jury. To Hiram Mason the whole trial was unendurable. The law had the aspect of a relentless boa-constrictor, slowly winding itself about Tom, while all these spectators, with merely a curious interest in the horrible, watched the process. The deadly creature had now to make but one more coil, and then, in its cruel and deliberate fashion, it would proceed to tighten its twists until the poor boy should be done to death. Barbara and the mother were entwined by this fate as well, while Hiram had not a little finger of help for them. He watched Lincoln as he took seat in moody silence. Why had the lawyer not done anything to help Tom? Any other lawyer with a desperate case would have had a stack of law-books in front of him, as a sort of dam against the flood. But Lincoln had neither law-books nor so much as a sc.r.a.p of paper.

The prosecuting attorney, with a taste for climaxes, reserved his chief witness to the last. Even now he was not ready to call Sovine. He would add one more stone to the pyramid of presumptive proof before he capped it all with certainty. Markham was therefore put up to identify the old pistol which he had found in Tom's room. Lincoln again waived cross-examination. Blackman felt certain that he himself could have done better. He mentally constructed the questions that should have been put to the deputy sheriff. Was the pistol hot when you found it? Did it smell of powder? Did the family make any objection to your search?--Even if the judge had ruled out such questions the jury would have heard the questions, and a question often has weight in spite of rulings from the bench. The prosecuting attorney began to feel sure of his own case; he had come to his last witness and his great stroke.

"Call David Sovine," he said, wiping his brow and looking relieved.

"David Sovine! David Sovine! David Sovine!" cried the sheriff in due and ancient form, though David sat almost within whispering distance of him.

The witness stood up.

"Howld up your roight hand," said the clerk.

Then when Dave's right hand was up Magill rattled off the form of the oath in the most approved and clerkly style, only adding to its effect by the mild brogue of his p.r.o.nunciation.

"Do sol'm swear 't yull tell th' truth, th' 'ole truth, en nuthin' b'

th' truth, s' yilpye G.o.d," said the clerk, without once pausing for breath.