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Page 23
"He is not on trial for the murder of nine men," interrupted Colonel
Stogart, springing from his chair, "but for the justifiable killing of
one, and I demand, your honor, that--"
"--has sent nine other men to meet their Maker," continued the
District Attorney, "meets with the awful judgment of a higher court
than this."
Colonel Stogart smiled scornfully at the platitude, and sat down with
an expressive shrug; but no one noticed him.
The District Attorney raised his arm and faced the court-room. "It
cannot be said of _us_," he cried, "that we have sat idle in the
market-place. We have advanced and advanced in the last ten years,
until we have reached the very foremost place with civilized people.
This Rip Van Winkle of the past returns to find a city where he left a
prairie town, a bank where he spun his roulette wheel, this
magnificent court-house instead of a vigilance committee. And what is
his part in this new court-house, which to-day, for the first time,
throws open its doors to protect the just and to punish the unjust?
"Is he there in the box among those honorable men, the gentlemen of
the jury? Is he in that great crowd of intelligent, public-spirited
citizens who make the bone and sinew of this our fair city? Is he on
the honored bench dispensing justice, and making the intricacies of
the law straight? No, gentlemen; he has no part in our triumph. He is
there, in the prisoners' pen, an outlaw, a convicted murderer, and an
unconvicted assassin, the last of his race--the bullies and bad men of
the border--a thing to be forgotten and put away forever from the
sight of man. He has outlasted his time; he is a superfluity and an
outrage on our reign of decency and order. And I ask you, gentlemen,
to put him away where he will not hear the voice of man nor children's
laughter, nor see a woman smile, where he will not even see the face
of the warden who feeds him, nor sunlight except as it is filtered
through the iron bars of a jail. Bury him with the bitter past, with
the lawlessness that has gone--that has gone, thank God--and which
must _not_ return. Place him in the cell where he belongs, and
whence, had justice been done, he would never have been taken alive."
The District Attorney sat down suddenly, with a quick nod to the Judge
and the jury, and fumbled over his papers with nervous fingers. He was
keenly conscious, and excited with the fervor of his own words. He
heard the reluctantly hushed applause and the whispers of the crowd,
and noted the quick and combined movement of the jury with a selfish
sweet pleasure, which showed itself only in the tightening of the lips
and nostrils. Those nearest him tugged at his sleeve and shook hands
with him. He remembered this afterward as one of the rewards of the
moment. He turned the documents before him over and scribbled words
upon a piece of paper and read a passage in an open law-book. He did
this quite mechanically, and was conscious of nothing until the
foreman pronounced the prisoner at the bar guilty of murder in the
second degree.
Judge Truax leaned across his desk and said, simply, that it lay in
his power to sentence the prisoner to not less than two years'
confinement in the State penitentiary or for the remainder of his
life.
"Before I deliver sentence on you, Abner Barrow," he said, with an old
man's kind severity, "is there anything you have to say on your own
behalf?"
The District Attorney turned his face, as did all the others, but he
did not see the prisoner. He still saw himself holding the court-room
with a spell, and heard his own periods ringing against the
whitewashed ceiling. The others saw a tall, broad-shouldered man
leaning heavily forward over the bar of the prisoner's box. His face
was white with the prison tan, markedly so in contrast with those
sunburnt by the wind and sun turned toward him, and pinched and
hollow-eyed and worn. When he spoke, his voice had the huskiness which
comes from non-use, and cracked and broke like a child's.
"I don't know, Judge," he said, hesitatingly, and staring stupidly at
the mass of faces in the well beneath him, "that I have anything to
say--in my own behalf. I don't know as it would be any use. I guess
what the gentleman said about me is all there is to say. He put it
about right. I've had my fun, and I've got to pay for it--that is, I
thought it was fun at the time. I am not going to cry any baby act and
beg off, or anything, if that's what you mean. But there is something
I'd like to say if I thought you would believe me." He frowned down at
the green table as though the words he wanted would not come, and his
eyes wandered from one face to another, until they rested upon the
bowed head of the only woman in the room. They remained there for some
short time, and then Barrow drew in his breath more quickly, and
turned with something like a show of confidence to the jury.
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