On the fourth day the court called for the defense. Curiosity reached
its culmination. Men fought for a chance to get within hearing
distance. Dan and his comrades sat with an indolent air of
satisfaction. Aunty Perkins crowded close to the front. Through the
door and up to the very railing which enclosed the active
participants, Andrew Malden and Tony made their way. There were only
four possible points for the defense. First, it might prove Job's
changed character; second, that it was Job, not Dan, to whom Jane Reed
was betrothed; third, that Job was far away in the Merced canyon with
Indian Bill at the time of the death; fourth, to show by what cause
death came to the fated girl.

The last, the defense could not prove; for the third, they had no
evidence but the prisoner's own word, and that the court would not
accept; the second, not even the lawyer or Andrew Malden knew, and no
power on earth could make Job Malden tell it; there was no defense to
make except to show the character of Job and plead the fact that
circumstantial evidence was not proof of guilt.

He did his best, that bungling young attorney. He tried to take
advantage of technicalities, but Job utterly forbade that. If
righteousness and God could not clear him, nothing else could. The
defense was lame, but it proved that some people believed in Job and
loved him. Tim's father told, between his tears, the story of "Tim's
praist." Aunty Perkins and the preacher spoke ringing words for him.
From the Yellow Jacket men came and defended his noble life. But it
all went for naught with that jury. It was facts, not sentiment, they
wanted. All this might be true, but if Job Malden had done the awful
deed which the evidence went to show, then these things only made his
crime the blacker.

The defense finished at noon, and the lawyers began their pleas at one
o'clock. They hardly needed to speak--Grizzly county had tried the
case and the verdict was in. Yet they spoke. How eloquently the
prosecuting attorney showed the influence of heredity--that the evil
in the father would show itself some day in the boy! How he pictured
the temporary religious change in Job's life, and then his relapse as
the old fever came back into his blood! He had relapsed before, they
all knew. He did not doubt his temporary goodness; but love is
stronger than fear and hatred than integrity, and meeting Jane in the
valley had roused all the old passion. Out on the cliff they had