urt room was echoing to the strident tones of the old
criminal lawyer's voice. As the minutes passed, however, it became a
certainty with North that no miracle would happen.

Belknap concluded his plea shortly before six o'clock. And this was the
end,--this was the last move in the game where his life was the stake!
In spite of his exhaustion of mind and body North had followed the
speech with the closest attention. He told himself now, that the state's
case was unshaken, that the facts, stubborn and damning, were not to be
brushed aside.

Moxlow's answer to Belknap's plea was brief, occupying little more than
half an hour, and the trial was ended. It rested with the jury 'to say
whether John North was innocent or guilty. As the jury filed from the
room North realized this with a feeling of relief in that that at last
the miserable ordeal was over. He had never been quite bereft of hope,
the consciousness of his own innocence had measurably sustained him in
his darkest hours. And now once more his imagination swept him beyond
the present into the future; again he could believe that he was to pass
from that room a free man to take his place in the world from which he
had these many weary months been excluded. There was no bitterness in
his heart toward any one, even Moxlow's harsh denunciation of him was
forgotten; the law through its bungling agents had laid its savage hands
on him, that was all, and these agents had merely done what they
conceived to be their duty.

He glanced toward the big clock on the wall above the judge's desk and
saw that thirty minutes had already gone by since the jury retired.
Another half-hour passed while he studied the face of the clock, but the
door of the jury room, near which Deputy-sheriff Brockett had taken up
his station, still remained closed and no sound came from beyond it. At
his back he heard one man whisper to another that the jurymen's dinner
had just been brought in from the hotel.

"That means another three quarters of an hour,--it's their last chance
to get a square meal at the county's expense!" the speaker added, which
earned him a neighboring ripple of laughter.

Judge Langham and Moxlow had withdrawn to the former's private room.
Sheriff Conklin touched North on the shoulder.

"I guess we'd better go back, John!" he said. "If they want us to-night
they can send for us."

Morbid and determined, the spectators settled down to wait for the
verdict. The buzz of conve