She could have your scalp, my boy, if she wanted it!"

"And McGurk could have yours!" retorted O'Brien with the impudence born
of knowledge.

The prosecution of Shane O'Connell, which otherwise might have slowly
languished and languishing died, took on new life owing to the evidence
thus innocently delivered into the hands of the district attorney; in
fact it became a _cause celebre_. The essential elements to convict were
now all there--the _corpus delicti_, evidence of threats on the part of
the defendant, of motive, of opportunity, and--his confession. The law
which provides that the statement of an accused "is not sufficient to
warrant his conviction without additional proof that the crime charged
has been committed" would be abundantly satisfied--though without his
confession there would have been no proof whatever that the crime
charged had been committed by him.

Thus, without her knowing it, Miss Beekman was an essential witness and,
in fact, the pivot upon which the entire case turned.

The day of the great sporting event came. With it arrived in full
panoply the McGurks, their relatives and followers. All Cherry Hill
seemed to have packed itself into Part I of the Supreme Court. There was
an atmosphere somehow suggestive of the races or a prize fight. But it
was a sporting event which savored of a sure thing--really more like a
hanging. They were there to make holiday over the law's revenge for the
killing of the darling of the Pearl Button Kids. Peckham personally
assured McGurk that everything was copper-fastened.

"He's halfway up the river already!" he said jocularly.

And McGurk, swelling with importance and emotion, pulled a couple of
cigars from his pocket and the two smoked the pipe of peace.

But the reader is not particularly concerned with the progress of the
trial, for he has already attended many. It is enough to say that a jury
with undershot jaws, who had proved by previous experience their
indifference to capital punishment and to all human sympathy, were
finally selected and that the witnesses were duly called, and testified
to the usual facts, while the Pearl Button Kids and the rest, spitting
surreptitiously beneath the benches, eagerly drank in every word. There
was nothing for Mr. Tutt to do; nothing for him to deny. The case built
itself up, brick by brick. And Shane O'Connell sat there unemotionally,
hardly listening. There was nothing in the evidence to reflect in any
way upon th