awful responsibility of that thing we call the State,
which, having the power of life and death without gainsay or hindrance,
should prove to the last inch of necessity its right to take a human
life. And the right and the reason should bring conviction to every
honest human mind. That is all I have to say."

The crown attorney made a perfunctory reply. The judge's charge was
brief, and, if anything, a little in favour of the prisoner--very
little, a casuist's little; and the jury filed out of the room. They
were gone but ten minutes. When they returned, the verdict was given:
"Not guilty, your Honour!"

Then it was that a woman laughed in the gallery. Then a whispering voice
said across the railing which separated the public from the lawyers:
"Charley! Charley!"

Though Charley turned and looked at the lady who spoke, he made no
response.

A few minutes later, outside the court, as he walked quickly away, again
inscrutable and debonair, the prisoner, Joseph Nadeau, touched him on
the arm and said:

"M'sieu', M'sieu', you have saved my life--I thank you, M'sieu'!"

Charley Steele drew his arm away with disgust. "Get out of my sight!
You're as guilty as hell!" he said.

CHAPTER II. WHAT CAME OF THE TRIAL

"When this is over, Kathleen, I will come to you." So Charley Steele's
eyes had said to a lady in the court room on that last day of the great
trial. The lady had left the court-room dazed and exalted. She, with
hundreds of others, had had a revelation of Charley Steele; had had also
the great emotional experience of seeing a crowd make the 'volte face'
with their convictions; looking at a prisoner one moment with eyes of
loathing and anticipating his gruesome end, the next moment seeing him
as the possible martyr to the machinery of the law. She whose heart
was used to beat so evenly had felt it leap and swell with excitement,
awaiting the moment when the jury filed back into the court-room. Then
it stood still, as a wave might hang for an instant at its crest ere it
swept down to beat upon the shore.

With her as with most present, the deepest feeling in the agitated
suspense was not so much that the prisoner should go free, as that the
prisoner's counsel should win his case. It was as if Charley Steele were
on trial instead of the prisoner. He was the imminent figure; it was his
fate that was in the balance--such was the antic irony of suggestion.
And the truth was, that the fates of both prisoner an