at
marred one eye. I shouldn't call it a cast exactly ... but they didn't
match."

Abruptly the State dismissed that witness, and about the defence tables
went quiet but triumphant smiles--which the jury did not miss, as the
pencils of the press writers raced. But over Boone Wellver's face passed
a shadow, and Asa, catching his eye across the heads of the crowd, read
the motion of the boy's moving lips, as, without sound, they shaped the
words, "Keep cool now, Asa! Keep cool."

CHAPTER XIII

The prosecution had other trumps yet to play. It called a name, which
brought into the courtroom, with shambling and uncertain step, a man
whose face was pasty with prison pallour. His thin body was garbed in
the zebra-stripes of the penitentiary's livery, and the hand that he
raised to take oath trembled. His voice, too, carried a quaver of
weakness in its first syllable.

Here at length was the promised sensation. The stenographer who had
accepted his life-term had become star witness for the State. Now,
enlisted from the ranks of the accused, he had undertaken to tell what
purported to be the inside story of the plot.

To hear his words, one had to bend attentively, yet, when he had talked
for an hour, the scratching of pencils at the press table sounded,
through his pauses, almost clamorous, and there was no other sound.

Boone sat, tight of muscle, with his eyes steadfastly fixed on Asa. He
thought that just now he was needed, but at the pit of his stomach
gnawed a sickness of dread, and it seemed to him that already he could
see the gallows rising from its ugly platform.

The bearded lawyer who had once battered down this man's own defence now
stood before him, shepherding his words on toward their climax. Faint
response followed sharp interrogation with a deadly effectiveness.

"When did you first meet the defendant--Asa Gregory?"

"On the thirtieth of January--in the forenoon."

"Where?"

"At my office in the state house."

"Did your office adjoin that of the Secretary of State?"

"It did."

"What occurred at that time and place?"

"Mr. Gregory rapped.... I let him in.... He handed me a letter from the
Governor, and we went into the Secretary's room.... Then he went over to
the window and looked out--and drew the blind part of the way down. For
a while he just studied the room ... taking in its details."

The man in convict garb paused and fell into a fit of broken coughing.

"Did you have any c