.

Now Moxlow, lank and awkward, with long black locks sweeping the collar
of his rusty coat, slipped from his chair and stood before the judge's
desk. For an instant Langham's glance shifted from his father to the
accused man. He felt intense hatred of him; to his warped and twisted
consciousness, half mad as he was with drink and drugs, North's life
seemed the one thing that stood between himself and safety,--and clearly
North had forfeited the right to live!

When Moxlow's even tones fell on the expectant hush, Langham writhed in
his seat. Each word, he felt, had a dreadful significance; the big linen
handkerchief went back and forth across his face as he sought to mop
away the sweat that oozed from every pore. He had gone as deep in the
prosecutor's counsels as he dared go, he knew the man's power of
invective, and his sledge-hammer force in argument; he wanted him to cut
loose and overwhelm North all in a breath! The blood in him leaped and
tingled with suppressed excitement, his twitching lips shaped themselves
with Moxlow's words. He felt that Moxlow was letting his opportunity
pass him by, that after all he was not equal to the task before him,
that it was one thing to plan and quite another to perform. Men, such as
those jurors, must be powerfully moved or they would shrink from a
verdict of guilty!

But Moxlow persevered in his level tones, he was not to be hurried. He
felt the case as good as won, and there was the taste of triumph in his
mouth, for he was going to convict his man in spite of the best criminal
lawyer in the state! Yet presently the level tones became more and more
incisive, and Moxlow would walk toward North, his long finger extended,
to loose a perfect storm of words that cut and stung and insulted. He
went deep into North's past, and stripped him bare; shabby, mean, and
profligate, he pictured those few short years of his manhood until he
became the broken spendthrift, desperately in need of money and rendered
daring by the ruin that had overtaken him.

Moxlow's speech lasted three hours, and when he ended a burning mist was
before North's eyes. He saw vaguely the tall figure of the prosecuting
attorney sink into a chair, and he gave a great sigh of relief. Perhaps
North expected Belknap to perform some miracle of vindication in his
behalf, certainly when his counsel advanced to the rail that guarded the
bench there were both authority and confidence in his manner, and soon
the dingy co