ove, he shall
hear me yet, even if it has to be in the open court and in the presence
of judge and jury!"

BOOK III.

THE SCALES OF JUSTICE.

XXVII.

THE GREAT TRIAL.

_Othello._--What dost thou think?
_Iago._-- Think, my lord?
_Othello._--By heav'n, he echoes me.
As if there was some monster in his thought
Too hideous to be shown.--OTHELLO.

SIBLEY was in a stir. Sibley was the central point of interest for the
whole country. The great trial was in progress and the curiosity of the
populace knew no bounds.

In a room of the hotel sat our two detectives. They had just come from
the court-house. Both seemed inclined to talk, though both showed an
indisposition to open the conversation. A hesitation lay between them; a
certain thin vail of embarrassment that either one would have found it
hard to explain, and yet which sufficed to make their intercourse a
trifle uncertain in its character, though Hickory's look had lost none
of its rude good-humor, and Byrd's manner was the same mixture of easy
nonchalance and quiet self-possession it had always been.

It was Hickory who spoke at last.

"Well, Byrd?" was his suggestive exclamation.

"Well, Hickory?" was the quiet reply.

"What do you think of the case so far?"

"I think"--the words came somewhat slowly--"I think that it looks bad.
Bad for the prisoner, I mean," he explained the next moment with a quick
flush.

"Your sympathies are evidently with Mansell," Hickory quietly remarked.

"Yes," was the slow reply. "Not that I think him innocent, or would turn
a hair's breadth from the truth to serve him."

"He _is_ a manly fellow," Hickory bluntly admitted, after a moment's
puff at the pipe he was smoking. "Do you remember the peculiar
straightforwardness of his look when he uttered his plea of 'Not
guilty,' and the tone he used too, so quiet, yet so emphatic? You could
have heard a pin drop."

"Yes," returned Mr. Byrd, with a quick contraction of his usually smooth
brow.

"Have you noticed," the other broke forth, after another puff, "a
certain curious air of disdain that he wears?"

"Yes," was again the short reply.

"I wonder what it means?" queried Hickory carelessly, knocking the ashes
out of his pipe.

Mr. Byrd flashed a quick askance look at his colleague from under his
half-fallen lids, but made no answer.

"It is not pride alone," resumed the rough-and-ready