his prisoner is ignorant of either? With a
life to guard that is prized by friends and precious to the State
shall we let this man go free who had sworn before witnesses to
destroy it?"

"God forefend!" said the Bishop.

It was lawful to question the prisoner, and so he was questioned.

"Is it true that you have been lying in wait to kill the President?"
asked the spokesman.

But Jason made no answer.

"Is it true that you have done so from a desire for personal
vengeance?"

No answer.

"Or from political motives?"

No answer.

"Or both?"

Still no answer.

Then the spokesman turned back to the Court. "The stubborn
persistence of the prisoner is easy to understand," he said, and
smiled.

"Wait," said the old Bishop, and he turned towards Jason.

"Have you any valid plea?"

But Jason gave no sign.

"Listen," said the Bishop. "Though the man who compasses the
destruction of a single life is as though he had destroyed a world,
for the posterity of him who is dead might have filled a world, yet
have all laws of men since the Pentateuch recognized certain
conditions that limit the gravity of the crime. If the man who is
slain has himself slain the near kindred of his slayer, though the
law of Iceland would no longer hold him guiltless, as in the ancient
times when evil for evil was the rule and sentence, neither would it
punish him as a murderer, who must eat the bread and drink the water
of misery all his days. Now what is true of murder must be true of
intent to murder, and though I am loth to believe it possible in this
instance, honoring and loving as we all do that good man whom you are
charged with lying in wait to kill, yet in my duty must I ask you the
question--Has Michael Sunlocks spilled blood of your blood, and is it
as a redeemer of blood that you go about to slay him?"

There was a dead hush in the little crowded courthouse as Jason
lifted his heavy, bloodshot eyes to the Bishop's face and answered,
in a weary voice, "I have nothing to say."

Then an aged Lutheran priest, who had sat within the rail, with a
snuffbox in his hand and a red print handkerchief across his knee,
hobbled up to the witness stool and tendered evidence. He could throw
light on the prisoner's hatred of the President, if it was true that
the President was a son of Stephen Orry. He knew the prisoner, and
had named him in his baptism. He had known the prisoner's mother
also, and had sat with her at her death. It was