The Right of Way, Volume 1.

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er the mass of gaping humanity, which had twitched at skirts, drawn purposeless hands across prickling faces, and kept nervous legs at a gallop, the smothering weig

er, and seven or eight hundred eyes raced between three centres of interest-the judge, the prisoner, and the prisoner's cou

ant. The minority would have based their belief that the prisoner had a chance of escape, not on his possible innocence, not on insufficient evidence, but on a curious faith in the prisoner's lawyer. This minority would not have been composed of the friends of the

ed man, and the next day the body of the victim had been found by the roadside. The prisoner was a stranger in the lumber-camp where the deed was done, and while there had been m

no perceptible effect upon Charley Steele, who seem

nbusinesslike, yet judge and jury came to see, before the second day was done, that he had let no essential thing pass, that the questions he asked had

he afternoon, how many times he adjusted his monocle to look at the judge meditatively. Probably no man, for eight hours a day, ever exasperated and tried a judge, jury, and public, as did this man of twenty-ni

was upon the prisoner, that he was found sleeping quietly in his bed when he was arrested, that he had not been seen to commit the deed, did not weigh in the minds of the general public. The man's guilt wa

. Only at the very close of the sitting did he appear to rouse himself. Then, for a brief ten minutes, he cross-examined a friend of the murdered merchant in a fashion which startled the court-room, for he suddenly brought out the fact that the dead man had once struck a woman in the face in the open street. This fact, sharply stated by the prisoner's counsel, with no explanation and no comment, seemed uselessly intrusive and maliciou

screwed it in again, staring straight before him much of the time. But twice he spoke to the prisoner in a low voice, and was hurriedly answered in French as crude as his own was perfect. When he spoke, which was at rare intervals, h

his office with a few biscuits and an ominous bottle before him, till the time came for him to go back to t

he prisoner. When he sat down, people glanced meaningly at each other, as though th

alf. Some great change had passed over him. There was no longer abstraction, indifference, or apparent boredom, or disdai

ye, with a word scarce above a whisper, as he

ty governed his argument. The flaneur, the poseur-if such he was-no longer appeared. He came close to the jurymen, leaned his hands upon the back of a chair-as it were, shut out the public, even the judge, from his circle of interest-and talked in a conversational tone. An air of confidence passed from him to the amazed yet easily captivated jury; the distance between the

possibilities, no loose ends of certainty, no invading alternatives. Was this so in the case of the man before them? They were faced by a curious situation. So far as the trial was concerned, the prisoner himself was the only person who could tell them who he was, what was his past, and, if he committed the crime, what was-the motive of it: out of what spirit-of revenge, or hatred- the dead man had been sent to his account. Probably in the whole history of crime there never was a more peculiar case. Even himself the prisoner's counsel was dealing with one whose life was hid from him previous to t

save a lady sitting not a score of feet from where the counsel for the prisoner stood. This lady's face was not one that could flush easily; it belonged to a temperament as even as her person was symmetrically beautiful. As Charley talked, her eyes were fixed steadily, wonderingly upon him. There was a question in her gaze, which

He turned towards the prisoner and traced his possible history: as the sensitive, intelligent son of godly Catholic parents from some remote parish in French Canada. He drew an imaginary picture of the home from which he might have come, and of the parents and brothers and sisters who would have lived weeks of torture knowing that their son and brother was being tried for his life. It might at first glance seem quixotic, eccentric, but was it unnatural that the prisoner should choose silence as to his origin and home, rather t

d, no weapon, was found about him or near him, and that he wa

f the conversation had been brought into court? Men with quick tempers might quarrel over trivial things, but exasperation did not always end in bodily injury and the taking of life; imprecations were not so uncomm

with white face and clinched hands listened moveless and staring. Charley Steele was holding captive the emotions and the judgments of his hearers. All antipathy had gone; there was a strange

ept a factory girl in affluence for two years. Here was motive for murder-if motive were to govern them-far greater than might be suggested by excited conversation which listeners who could not hear a word construed into a qu

very of the unsound character of the evidence. The man might be guilty, but their personal guilt, the guilt of the law, would be far greater if they condemned the man on violable evidence. With a last simple appe

wful responsibility of that thing we call the State, which, having the power of life and death without gainsay or hindrance, should prove to the last inc

le in favour of the prisoner-very little, a casuist's little; and the jury filed out of the room. T

a whispering voice said across the railing which sep

looked at the lady who s

quickly away, again inscrutable and debonair, the pri

u have saved my life-

s arm away with disgus

uilty as he