with its Meakums, wore no expression at all during
any of his remarks. Their eyes were upon him, but entirely fishlike. He
dismissed the cumbersome futilities one by one. "Now three witnesses
have between them recognized all the prisoners but one," he continued.
"That one, a reputed pauper, paid several hundred dollars of debts in
gold the morning after the robbery. The money is said to be the proceeds
of a cattle sale. No cattle have ever been known to belong to this man,
and the purchaser had never been known to have any income until this
trial began. The prisoner's name was on Mrs. Sproud's paper. The
statement of one witness that he sat on a stone and saw three other of
the prisoners firing has been contradicted by a woman who described
herself as having run away at once; it is supported by two men who are
admitted by all to have remained, and in consequence been shot. Their
statements have been assailed by no one. Their testimony stands on the
record unimpeached. They have identified five prisoners. If you believe
them--and remember that not a word they said has been questioned--" here
the judge emphasized more and more clearly. He concluded with the
various alternatives of fact according to which the jury must find its
several possible verdicts. When he had finished, the room sat sullen and
still, and the twelve went out. I am told that they remained ten minutes
away. It seemed one to me.

When they had resumed their seats I noticed the same fishlike oracular
eye in most of them unchanged. "Not guilty," said the foreman.

"What!" shouted the judge, startled out of all judicial propriety. "None
of 'em?"

"Not guilty," monotonously repeated the foreman.

We were silent amid the din of triumph now raised by Tucson. In the
laughter, the hand-shaking, the shouting, and the jubilant pistol-shots
that some particularly free spirit fired in the old Cathedral Square, we
went to our dinner; and not even Stirling could joke. "There's a certain
natural justice done here in spite of them," he said. "They are not one
cent richer for all their looted twenty-eight thousand. They come out
free, but penniless."

"How about Jenks and that jury?" said I. And Stirling shrugged his
shoulders.

But we had yet some crowning impudence to learn. Later, in the street,
the officers and I met the prisoners, their witnesses, and their counsel
emerging from a photographer's studio. The Territorial Delegate had been
taken in a group with