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Page 10
"'So we have heard you say. Do you think that a man, in perfectly clean
clothes, could have lifted the body out of the ditch without being
covered with blood?'
"'No: perhaps not.'
"'Was there any means by which so much blood could have been accumulated
in the ditch, unless the body had been thrown there?'
"'I think not. The pool were too big.'
"'I have two more questions to ask, and I beg the special attention of
the jury to the answers. Is the ditch, or is it not, very thickly
overgrown with brambles and brushwood?'
"'Yes; there be a many brambles.'
"'Do you think that any single man could drag a heavy body from the
bottom of the ditch on to the bank, without severely scratching his
hands?'
"'No; I don't suppose he could.'
"'That is all I wish to ask.'
"Not being permitted to address the jury, it was all that he could do.
Then the Recorder summed up. God forgive him the fatal accuracy
with which he placed every link in a chain of evidence so condemning
that I confess poor George seemed almost to have been taken _in
flagrante delicto_. The jury withdrew; and my sweet Mistress Dorothy,
who had remained in court against my wish, suddenly dropped like an
apple-blossom, and I carried her out in my arms. When I had placed her
in safety, I came back, and pressed through the crowd to hear the
verdict.
"As I got in, the Recorder's voice fell on my ear, every word like a
funeral knell,--'_May the Lord have mercy on your soul!_'
"I think for a few minutes I lost my senses. I have a confused
remembrance of swaying hither and thither in a crowd; of execration, and
pity, and gaping curiosity; and then I got out, and some one passed me,
whose arm I grasped. It was Mr. A----.
"'Tell me,' I said, 'is there no hope? No recommendation to mercy?
Nothing?'
"He dragged me into a room, and, seizing me by the button, exclaimed--
"'We don't want mercy; we want justice! I say, sir, curse the present
condition of the law! It _must_ be altered, and I shall live to see it.
If I might have addressed the jury--there were a dozen points--we should
have carried him through. Besides,' he added, in a tone that seemed to
apologize for such a secondary consideration, 'I may say to you that I
fully believe that he is innocent, and am as sorry on his account as on
my own that we have lost the case.'
"And so the day is ended. _Fiat voluntas Domini!_"
* * * * *
Yes, Eleanor! Dr. Penn was right. The day did end--and the next--and
the next; and drop by drop the cup of sorrow was drained. And when the
draught is done, should we be the better, Nelly, if it had been nectar?
I had neither died nor gone mad when the day came--the last complete day
that George was to see on earth. It was Sunday; and, after a sleepless
night, I saw the red sun break through the grey morning. I always sleep
with my window open; and, as I lay and watched the sunrise, I thought--
"He will see this sunrise, and to-morrow's sunrise; but no other! No,
no!--never more!"
But then a stronger thought seemed to rise involuntarily against that
one--
"Peace, fool! If this be the sorrow, it is one that must come to all
men."
And then, Nelly (it is strange, but it was so), there broke out in the
stone pine by my window a chorus of little birds whom the sunbeams had
awakened; and they sang so sweet and so loud (like the white bird that
sang to the monk Felix), that earthly cares seemed to fade away, and I
fell asleep, and slept the first sound, dreamless sleep that had blessed
me since our great trouble came.
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