CHAPTER XXVIITHE TRIAL
“And so the time passed to the day on which the judges entered the town to hold the assizes.
“The docket was an unusually full one for this term, and many cases had to be tried before that of John Weston, charged with the murder of John Ketcham, was called.
“The remarkable feature in this case was the fact that it involved the first case of highway robbery that had occurred in that neighborhood for more than half a century, and seemed the revival of a phase of crime that had passed into history and should have been impossible in this age.
“The case drew a large concourse of people to the town, and on the first day of the trial filled the court-room almost to suffocation.
“But great was the surprise of the throng of spectators, when the atrocious criminal was brought in, to see a slight, dark-eyed and curly-haired boy, only eighteen years of age, and looking three years younger, placed in the dock.
“Many whispered comments passed through the crowd, as they gazed at the youthful prisoner. Here he stood lifted up in full view above everybody’s heads, a target for all glances, looking, not frightened, but quiet, subdued, and deeply humiliated by his position; looking anything rather than the brigand and desperado they had expected to see.
“When the preliminaries of the proceedings were over, and the young prisoner was arraigned, he pleaded:
“‘Not guilty.’
“The opening charge of the prosecuting attorney was a tremendous assault upon the accused boy, as if in his slight form was incarnated the spirit of revolt, robbery, murder, treason, and all manner of evil, danger and perdition; and as if the safety of her majesty’s people and dominions required the immediate death by hanging of the prisoner at the bar.
“Poor Joe was not at this time and in this place ahero, it is sad to say! He was a very sensitive and impressible boy, and hearing the prosecuting attorney go on at him at this rate, Joe was—so to speak—psychologized by him and led to look upon himself, the prisoner, as an incarnate fiend, though he had never even suspected the fact before. Now, under this scathing denunciation, the poor wretch bowed his head and looked so guilty that men groaned and women sighed to see such deep depravity in one so young.
“At the end of the prosecutor’s opening charge, that officer called the first witness—Paul Cartright—who, being duly sworn, testified that he was a county constable, and about midnight on the night of the 18th ultimo he had been alarmed by cries for help coming from that section of the high road that passes through Downdingle, and, with others, hurried to the scene, where he found the stage coach that runs between Orton Village and Orton Station overturned and surrounded by half a dozen, or about that number, of masked men. As he and his companions approached, he heard a pistol fired and saw a man fall. The masked men turned and fled into the thickets on each side of the road, and were soon lost to the pursuers, who gave their attention to seeing to the wounded and righting the coach. He, Paul Cartright, had caught one man in the act of flight—had caught him, red-handed, grasping the pistol with which he had just murdered the victim——
“‘Judge! Your honor! oh, your honor! I never fired that pistol! I stooped to see if I could do anything for the fallen man, and seeing he was quite dead, I picked up the pistol from the ground, without knowing what I was doing, and then the constable there took me!’ burst forth poor Joe, before any one could stop him.
“He was sternly called to order by the court, andthen instructed in a whisper by his counsel that he was on no account to speak again until he should be spoken to.
“Joe, crestfallen and despairing, subsided into silence.
“‘Do you see the man whom you took red-handed, as you say, standing pistol in hand over his slain victim?’ inquired the prosecutor.
“‘Yes, sir; that is the man,’ replied the witness, pointing to the young prisoner in the dock.
“Joe shook his head in desperation, but said never a word.
“The pistol was then produced, and identified by the witness as the one he had taken from the prisoner at the bar.
“A ball was produced, and identified by the next witness, Dr. Yorke, who performed the autopsy on the deceased lawyer, as the bullet extracted from the dead body. It was found to fit the empty chamber of the revolver, and to correspond perfectly with the other bullets with which it had been loaded.
“Pistol and bullets were handed to the jury, and passed from man to man—conclusive evidence of the guilt of the prisoner at the bar.
“Several other witnesses were examined, all of whom corroborated the testimony of the first one.
“Joe thought his case was gone, and he felt thankful that Lil was not there to hear evidence that might even have shaken her faith in him, since it had destroyed his faith in himself.
“But at length the case for the prosecution was closed, and the court took a recess.
“Then Mr. Rocke came around to the dock, and sat down and talked with his client, and encouraged him until his fainting self-esteem was in some degree restored.
“After recess the court reassembled, and the defencewas opened in a most eloquent speech, by Mr. Rocke.
“He told the whole story of ‘John Weston’s’ purely accidental connection with the party of young roughs who had stopped the stage coach, not either with any intention of mail robbery, murder or any other great violence, but merely to get possession of a certain document held by the deceased lawyer.
“He dwelt upon the young prisoner’s total ignorance of their plans and incomplicity with their offence.
“He described the purely accidental shooting of the lawyer by the pistol held in the deceased’s own hand, leveled at one of the assailants, and knocked up by the assailant in self-defence, so that it went off, sending a bullet under the chin, and upward and backward through the brain. He bade them see how easy, natural and inevitable such an accident must be.
“He described the humane impulse of the boy spectator, now the unhappy young prisoner at the bar. He told how he had seen the catastrophe; how he had run to the rescue, had bent over the fallen man, but finding him dead, had picked up the pistol, and without an idea of escaping, as the guilty ones had done, stood there gazing at the dead in a sort of panic, no doubt, until he was taken into custody by the constable.
“Was this, he asked, the conduct of a guilty man? The guilty had fled—had finally escaped—had never been recaptured. But had this young man ever even attempted to fly?
“He would bring witnesses to prove the unblemished good character of his client, and to prove that on the fatal night of the robbery and the murder he, the accused, so far from having any share in the conspiracy to stop the mail coach, had returned to his home to spend the evening with his newly marriedwife, and had gone again only at the request of his landlady, and on a neighborly errand. It was after having executed this errand, and while he was on his way home, that he chanced most unhappily to fall in with the party of young ruffians who stopped the coach. He had no hand in their offence, and was taken while trying to render assistance to the victim.
“Then Counsellor Rocke called Joseph Wyvil, of Stockton.
“Joseph Wyvil, who had just come into court, being sworn, testified that he knew the prisoner at the bar, and had known him since he, the prisoner, was four years of age—that is, for fourteen years—and that most intimately at home and at school, and had never known him to be untruthful, dishonest or cruel in all that time, and could not possibly believe him to be capable of the crime for which he was there arraigned.
“Wyvil was cross-examined by the prosecutor as to whether he really never knew the prisoner to vary in the least from the truth, or to take liberties with the sweetmeats, or to tease cats, or to do any little thing that might trench upon the borders of falsehood, theft or cruelty.
“But all this only brought out the most positive declaration of the witness that he had not.
“Joseph Wyvil was then allowed to sit down, and Belinda Claxton was called to the stand.
“Being sworn, this witness testified that she knew the prisoner at the bar, who had been her lodger for two months up to the time of his arrest; that on the night of the highway robbery and murder he had come home to tea, and had arranged to spend the evening with his wife, and herself and her husband, to play a game of whist, but that news had come of the old squire’s sudden death, and that she had persuaded him, the prisoner, to walk over to theHall and see if the report was true. That he went off, promising to be back in half an hour, or in an hour at most. When he failed to come she only thought that he had been detained at the Hall.
“Mrs. Claxton was also cross-examined as to when this whist party had been arranged. She answered that it had been settled before the prisoner had gone out to the post-office that afternoon, that he was to return to an early tea, and play whist all the evening.
“Mrs. Claxton was allowed to retire.
“John Claxton, husband of the last witness, was called, and corroborated her testimony in every item.
“Then the prosecutor got up to deliver the closing address to the jury. He made very light of the testimony for the defence, showing, or attempting to show, the jury that it really proved nothing, and had so little to do with the charge against the prisoner that it might well have been ruled out as irrelevant, impertinent and vexatious. He exhorted the jurors to do their stern duty as British jurors to punish red-handed crime; to—and so forth, and so forth.
“The judge arose to make the final charge. It was all against the prisoner. His honor considered the evidence for the prosecution as quite conclusive; the evidence advanced by the defence as weak and inconsequential. And charged the jury to bring in a verdict in accordance with the facts proven.
“Criminal trials of this sort are soon concluded in England. They do not waste so much time or spend so much money as we do over them.
“The jury retired to their room for half an hour, during which poor Joe waited in an agony of suspense as great as human nature can endure and live—in an agony that seemed to stretch that half hour into an eternity of suffering; and then the jury filed in and rendered their verdict:
“‘Guilty.’
“Joe sprang up and fell back on his seat as if he had been shot.
“‘It will be a murder, you know, Mr. Rocke. Poor Lil!’ he cried to his counsel, who came to his side.
“He was quickly called to order and directed to stand up.
“With as strong an effort at self-control as his boyish soul was capable of making, he obeyed and faced the court.
“He was then asked whether he had anything to say why sentence of death should not be pronounced upon him.
“He answered that he had a great deal to say. And then in eager, vehement, impassioned, yet most respectful language, he asseverated his innocence, and told again the often repeated true story of his connection with the young men who had stopped the stage coach.
“The court heard him patiently, and then, when he had ceased to speak, the judge put on the black cap and proceeded to sentence the boy.
“He told him the enormity of the crime of which he had been guilty, the fairness of the trial he had stood, the ability with which he had been defended, the justice of the verdict, the justice also of his sentence, the hopelessness of any thought of mercy in this world, the necessity of seeking mercy from a higher tribunal, and finally he pronounced the ghastly sentence of the law, and ended with the prayer that the Lord might have mercy on his soul!
“‘Poor Lil!’ was all the boy said, as the bailiffs led him away.
“And the court was adjourned.