whom he discovers as human as he had thought him
offensively distant.

Charley began by congratulating the crown attorney on his statement of
the case. He called it masterly; he said that in its presentations
it was irrefutable; as a precis of evidence purely circumstantial it
was--useful and interesting. But, speech-making aside, and ability--and
rhetoric--aside, and even personal conviction aside, the case should
stand or fall by its total, not its comparative, soundness. Since the
evidence was purely circumstantial, there must be no flaw in its cable
of assumption, it must be logically inviolate within itself. Starting
with assumption only, there must be no straying possibilities, no loose
ends of certainty, no invading alternatives. Was this so in the case of
the man before them? They were faced by a curious situation. So far as
the trial was concerned, the prisoner himself was the only person who
could tell them who he was, what was his past, and, if he committed the
crime, what was--the motive of it: out of what spirit--of revenge, or
hatred--the dead man had been sent to his account. Probably in the whole
history of crime there never was a more peculiar case. Even himself
the prisoner's counsel was dealing with one whose life was hid from him
previous to the day the murdered man was discovered by the roadside.
The prisoner had not sought to prove an alibi; he had done no more than
formally plead not guilty. There was no material for defence save
that offered by the prosecution. He had undertaken the defence of
the prisoner because it was his duty as a lawyer to see that the law
justified itself; that it satisfied every demand of proof to the last
atom of certainty; that it met the final possibility of doubt with
evidence perfect and inviolate if circumstantial, and uncontradictory if
eye-witness, if tell-tale incident, were to furnish basis of proof.

Judge, jury, and public riveted their eyes upon Charley Steele. He had
now drawn a little farther away from the jury-box; his eye took in
the judge as well; once or twice he turned, as if appealingly and
confidently, to the people in the room. It was terribly hot, the air
was sickeningly close, every one seemed oppressed--every one save a
lady sitting not a score of feet from where the counsel for the prisoner
stood. This lady's face was not one that could flush easily; it belonged
to a temperament as even as her person was symmetrically beautiful.
As Charley talk