Twelve years is a long time,
but not long enough to make wise men forget."
XXII
BEFORE THE GATES
Had she not caught the words themselves she would have recognised
their import from the blighting effect they produced upon the
persons grouped within hearing.
Schooled as most of them were to face with minds secure and
tempers quite unruffled the countless surprises of a court room,
they paled at the insinuation conveyed in these two sentences, and
with scarcely the interchange of glance or word, drew aside in a
silence which no man seemed inclined to break.
As for the people still huddled in the doorway, they rushed away
helter-skelter into the street, there to proclaim the judge's
condition and its probable cause;--an event which to many quite
eclipsed in interest the more ordinary one which had just released
to freedom a man seemingly doomed.
Few persons were now left in the great room, and Deborah,
embarrassed to find that she was the only woman present, was on
the point of escaping from her corner when she perceived a
movement take place in the rigid form from which she had not yet
withdrawn her eyes, and, regarding Judge Ostrander more
attentively, she caught the gleam of his suspicious eye as it
glanced this way and that to see if his lapse of consciousness had
been noticed by those about him.
Would the man still in possession of the paper whose contents had
brought about this attack understand these evidences of
apprehension? Yes; and what is more, he seems to take such means
as offers to hide from the judge all knowledge of the fact that
any other eyes than his own have read these invidious words.
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