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Any discussion here is irregular and premature and must be reserved for the jury-room after they have retired." The foreman of the jury struggled to his feet. He was a powerful man, with a good-humored face, and, in spite of his unfelicitous nickname of "The Bone-Breaker," had a kindly, simple, but somewhat emotional nature.
He knew that she possessed that love, because that night and that morning he felt it within him, and felt that in that love his soul mingled into one with hers. Ah, if that feeling had continued unchanged! "Yes, that awful affair occurred after that notable commemoration of Christ's resurrection!" he thought now, sitting at the window of the jury-room.
Peaslee the next morning to the jury-room. The counsel of the night had brought no comfort, and when he came among his fellows their constraint and silence were far from reassuring. Nor, when the sitting had begun, did he like the enigmatic smile with which the well-dressed Paige stood and swung his watch-chain. How he distrusted and feared this smug, self-complacent young man!
A moment later judge, jury, witnesses, and sheriff were flying down the court-house steps at the point of Lewallen guns; the Lewallen horses, led by the gray, were snorting through the streets; their riders, barricaded in the forsaken court-house, were puffing a stream of fire and smoke from every window of court-room below and jury-room above. The streets were a bedlam.
The judge, an old man with silvery hair, turned to the jury. "Retire, gentlemen, to consider of your verdict." The door to the jury-room closed behind them, and left a thousand eyes fixed anxiously upon it. They had scarcely disappeared when the knock of the foreman was heard at the door. "Bring in the jury, Mr. Sheriff," the judge ordered.
Some, who were originally in favor of the defendant, became weary of their long confinement, and consented to go over to the slaveholder's side; but one of them, named Benjamin Thaw, declared that he would eat his Christmas dinner in the jury-room, before he would consent to such a flagrant act of injustice. His patience held out till the court adjourned.
Furthermore, a remark or so which he overheard indicated that the out-of-town men were inclined to take a harsh view of the matter. And reflecting on all these things, he paddled home through the depressing wet. And the next day it rained. More and more perturbed, as the climax approached, Mr. Peaslee took his place in the jury-room, and sat there with unhearing ears.
* We have been taken to task about this description of the jury-room; but we believe, and have good reason to believe, that every circumstance mentioned in it is a fact Do our readers remember the history of Orr's trial, where three- fourths of the jurors who convicted him were drunk a fact to which they themselves confirmed upon oath afterwards? "Give me your hand, Jack, we're agreed he swings!"
Sharp attorney-at-law! Mr. Sharp's in the jury-room. Then go fetch him directly," from the ushers and bailiffs of the court; for though Tomkins of Tomkins was slow himself, he insisted upon others being quick, and was a great hand at prating about saving the time of the suitors.
The jury retired to the jury-room and the lawyer to his office, where a stomach pump quickly put him out of danger. The jury is supposed to have acquitted. Such are some of the tricks of the legal trade as practised in its criminal branch. Most of them are unsuccessful and serve only to relieve the gray monotony of the courts.
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