, however slight, remained in their minds
of the guilt of the prisoner, it was their bounden duty to give her the
benefit of that doubt by a full acquittal. And so, praying Divine
Providence to direct their counsels, he dismissed them to deliberate on
their verdict.

The jury left the room in charge of a sheriff's officer.

And then the tongues of the spectators were loosened. The charge of the
judge had given great offence.

"It amounts to a positive instruction to the jury to acquit the
prisoner!" fiercely whispered one malcontent.

"And when the testimony has so clearly convicted her!" added another.

"Nothing but partiality! He and her father were old cronies," put in a
third.

"A partial judge ought to be impeached!" growled a fourth.

And so on the disapprobation rumbled through the court-room in thunder,
not loud, but deep.

And then all became still as death.

Meanwhile the judge sat calmly on the bench, the only evidence of his
strongly suppressed anxiety was the extreme paleness of his venerable
face. What was passing in his mind during this time of awful stillness
and waiting, in which the earth seemed arrested in her orbit, the sun
stopped in his course? The dread question, should he, with more than
Roman courage, be obliged to pass sentence of death on that child of his
old friend, that young high-born, refined, and beautiful woman, whom
from the depths of his soul he believed to be perfectly innocent?

Meanwhile Sybil Berners, her face bloodless, her frame almost pulseless,
breathless as with suspended animation, leaned upon her husband's breast
and waited for the verdict that was to give her life or death.

Both pale as herself, her husband and her friend sat, the first on her
right side and the second on her left, as they sit by the dying,
supporting her as best they might, her husband's arm around her waist,
her friend's hand clasping hers.

The hour wore slowly on. The room grew dark. But the judge did not
adjourn the court. He thought, most likely, it was better for all
concerned to end the agony that night if possible.

At length the lamps were lighted, and their beams fell upon the pallid
group of friends, upon whom the doom of death seemed already to have
descended; and further on, upon the "sea of heads" that now filled the
court-room and--waited for the verdict; for the crowd had greatly
increased since the commencement of the trial.

At length the hush of silence was stirred by