place just
mentioned, if there had not been a short cut to town open to him by means
of a door in the wall separating the Cumberland and Fulton grounds--a
door which was found unlocked, and with the key in it, by Zadok Brown,
the coachman, when he came home about three next morning.

All this stood; not an item of this testimony could be shaken. Most of it
was true; some of it false; but what was false, so unassailable by any
ordinary means, that, as I have already said, the clouds seemed settling
heavily over Arthur Cumberland when, at the end of the sixth day, the
proceedings closed.

The night that followed was a heavy one for me. Then came the fateful
morrow, and, after that, the day of days destined to make a life-long
impression on all who attended this trial.

XXV

"I AM INNOCENT"

All is oblique,
There's nothing level in our cursed natures,
But direct villainy. Therefore, be abhorred
All feasts, societies, and throngs of men!
His semblable, yea, himself, Timon disdains.

_Timon of Athens_.

I was early in my seat. Feeling the momentousness of the occasion--for
this day must decide my action for or against the prisoner--I searched
the faces of the jury, of the several counsel, and of the judge. I was
anxious to know what I had to expect from them, in case my conscience got
the better of my devotion to Carmel's interests and led me into that
declaration of the real facts which was forever faltering on my tongue,
without having, as yet, received the final impetus which could only end
in speech.

To give him his rightful precedence, the judge showed an impenetrable
countenance but little changed from that with which he had faced us all
from the start. He, like most of the men involved in these proceedings,
had been a close friend of the prisoner's father, and, in his capacity of
judge in this momentous trial, had had to contend with his personal
predilections, possibly with concealed sympathies, if not with equally
well-concealed prejudices. This had lent to his aspect a sternness never
observable in it before; but no man, even the captious Mr. Moffat, had
seriously questioned his rulings; and, whatever the cost to himself, he
had, up to this time, held the scales of justice so evenly that it would
have taken an audacious mind to have ventured on an interpretation of his
real attitude or mental leaning in this case.

From this imposing presence, nobly sustained by a well-proportioned
figure and