To Deborah, who had succeeded in getting a seat in a remote and
inconspicuous corner, these looks conveyed a spirit of so much
threat that she gazed about her in wonder that so few saw where
the real tragedy in this room lay.
But the jury is now seated, and the clatter of moving feet which
but a moment before filled the great room, sinks as if under a
charm, and silence, that awesome precursor of doom, lay in all its
weight upon every ear and heart, as the clerk advancing with the
cry, "Order in the court," put his momentous question:
"Gentlemen of the jury, are you ready with your verdict?"
A hush!--then, the clear voice of the foreman:
"We are."
"How do you find? Guilty or not guilty?"
Another hesitation. Did the foreman feel the threat lurking in the
air about him? If so, he failed to show it in his tones as he
uttered the words which released the prisoner:
"NOT GUILTY."
A growl from the crowd, almost like that of a beast stirring its
lair, then a quick cessation of all hubbub as every one turned to
the judge to whose one-sided charge they attributed this release.
Again he was a changed man. With the delivery of this verdict he
had regained his natural poise, and never had he looked more
authoritative or more pre-eminently the dominating spirit of the
court than in the few following moments in which he expressed the
thanks of the court to the jury and dismissed the prisoner. And
yet, though each person there, from the disappointed prosecutor to
the least aggressive spectator, appeared to feel the influence of
a presence and voice difficult to duplicate on the bench of this
country, Deborah experienced in her quiet corner no alleviation of
the fear which had brought her into this forbidding spot and held
her breathless through all these formalities.
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