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"O, very well, sir," said Gaut's lawyer, throwing a surprised and suspicious look around, as if to see whether some trap was not involved in this unexpected waiver of the usually claimed privilege. "Very well; don't blame you; shouldn't think you could find honest materials even for one speech."
But soon the shrill, harsh voice of Gaut's lawyer was heard rising above the buzz of the excited crowd, and bursting in a storm of denunciation and abuse on the witness, and all those who had a hand in bringing him forward, to thrust in, against all rule, such a story, which, if true, had no more to do with the prosecution now in progress than the first chapter of the Alcoran.
If he has such an one now, I think it must be a Jesuit priest, as I have heard that such a looking personage has, once or twice, been seen at Gaut's house since he moved into the settlement." "Well, if the villain has such a character as that in tow, he would be devil enough for all common purposes," responded the sheriff.
The news of Gaut's return alone, his improbable story, and the discovery of its almost certain falsity, spread like wild-fire over the settlement; and the people, already prepared to believe the worst by their previous suspicions of Gaut's evil designs, rose up as one man, instinctively shuddering at the thought of the apprehended crime, and feeling irresistibly impelled to attempt something to bring about that fearful atonement which Heaven demands of every man who wilfully sheds the blood of his fellow-man.
But, to my mind, all this makes it doubly certain that the Elwoods have met with foul play. It looks exactly like one of Gaut's devilish schemes of finesse, to cause this canoe to be sent down the rapids, and be so found as to lead folks to suppose the owners were drowned, and to put the public on a false scent. Yes, friends, you may depend there has been foul play, I dare not guess how foul.
Accordingly he now swore confidently to the beaver-skin in question, as one of his own taking, and, facing him boldly, even went so far as to declare his full belief in Gaut's guilt, not only in the burning of the camp, but in the stealing of the furs.
A man was immediately dispatched to Gaut's residence, for inquiries about the Elwoods; but the messenger returned and reported that Gaut said he parted with them on the Maguntic, he to go over the mountains to his home, on the Magalloway, and they, in their canoe, that had been frozen up in Oquossak, the fall before, to go to Bethel to sell their furs.
Every person in the room, indeed, at length became convinced that the young Indian had told the truth, and that he could know nothing of Gaut's guilt, though unconciously made a witness in his favor; with the view, probably, of meeting just such an exigency as had occurred in the present prosecution.
This gratuitous assertion of a mere matter of belief in the respondent's guilt, which was no legal evidence in the case, at once aroused, as might have been expected, the ire of Gaut's lawyer, who, with, fierce denunciations of the conduct of the witness, subjected him to a severe cross-examination.
The attorney for the prosecution, then, it being agreed to submit the case on the testimony now in, made a long and ingenious speech, abandoning the matter of the identified furs; dwelling largely on Gaut's dimly-hinted proposals to Elwood to join in the crime; and, on the ground that he was the only person in a situation to burn and rob the camp, raising the violent presumption that he must have perpetrated the double crime.
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