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The justice asking me if I had my prisoner's note with me, and replying that I had not, he told me that I must return with him and get it. Accordingly I carried Mingo back on my shoulders, but before we arrived at my dwelling, he complained of being hurt, and asked me if this was not a hard way of treating our fellow creatures.
"But the trial goes on; the prosecuting attorney demands an overwhelming punishment; and at last the prisoner's council is called upon to speak. Gentlemen, you were impatient at my persistence. I do not credit, I confess, the statement made by M. de Boiscoran. But my young colleague here does credit it. Well, let him tell us candidly.
By a great circuit, and partly over the same ground as he had traversed the night before, they conducted him into a large library, at one end of which sate four magistrates for the county, before whom he was placed: Sir Morgan Walladmor and Sir Charles Davenant were also present; but they sate at a distance, and took no part in the examination; though they surveyed the prisoner from time to time with great apparent interest; and the latter, who was writing, occasionally laid down his pen to attend to the prisoner's answers.
We drove past red Montagu House with its stone facings and dome, like a French hotel, and the cluster of buildings at its great gate. It had been then for over a decade the British Museum. The ground behind it was a great resort for Londoners of that day. Many a sad affair was fought there, but on that morning we saw a merry party on their way to play prisoner's base.
There was one other point which he would like to impress on the jury, and which the counsel for the prosecution had not sufficiently insisted upon. This was that the prisoner's guiltiness was the only plausible solution that had ever been advanced of the Bow Mystery. The medical evidence agreed that Mr. Constant did not die by his own hand. Some one must therefore have murdered him.
"Drink this coffee, anyway," another urged; "you'll feel warmer." These words almost made it seem like my own execution. My whole body turned cold in company with the prisoner's, and as if with a clank the situation tightened throughout my senses. "I reckon if every one's ready we'll start." It was the Virginian's voice once more, and different from the rest.
Like lightning he lunged with his bayonet and caught the German in the wrist, just as the knife was about to bury itself in Bart's neck. With a howl of rage and pain, as his arm was forced upward, the prisoner's hand lost its grip on the weapon and it clattered harmlessly to the ground. In an instant the German was overpowered and his arms tied behind him with his own belt.
The woman threw back her veil, and it was Molly's dark gaze, Molly's brown face, flushed and haggard, yet always beautiful, that looked out of the black frame. An ashen pallor spread over the prisoner's countenance. "Madeleine?" he asked in a whisper; then, with a loud ring of stern demand, "Madeleine!" "I went for her, I went for her myself I did all I could she would not come."
This done, he unloosed the pulley, and the ponderous machine, which resembled a trough, slowly descended upon the prisoner's breast. Marvel, then, took two iron weights, each of a hundred pounds, and placed them in the press. As this seemed insufficient, after a lapse of five minutes, he added another hundred weight. The prisoner breathed with difficulty.
"Captain Twinely," said Lord Dunseveric, "loose the belt from your prisoner's arms at once." The order was obeyed, and Neal stood free. "Bid your men leave the meeting-house, all but the man who holds the torch and the one who lies there on the floor." The men, cowed and sullen, went out. "Now," said Lord Dunseveric, "I will have this matter cleared up and I will have justice done."
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