University of Virginia Library

33. CHAPTER XXXIII.
A TRIAL—AN UNEXPECTED WITNESS.

The delight which Gertrude experienced at the recovery of her
young friend, for whom her attachment had daily increased,
alleviated for awhile the intensity of that suffering which had
arisen from her apprehensions for Harry.

Success of any kind always strengthens the faculty of hope,
and Gertrude willingly allowed her joy to become an augury of
that greater happiness which, with almost sanguine expectation,
she dared to anticipate as near at hand. But ere the following
day had passed—that day which preceded the one on which
Harry's trial was to take place—her heart again failed, and she
looked forward to the great event of the morrow as one too
terrible in its possible results to contemplate.

She could not forget that her own friend, and the friend
and counsel of Harry, with every disposition to encourage
them both, had warned her again and again that there was
the greatest danger of his conviction, despite every effort that
could be made in his behalf; and in her last interview with the
lawyer on that very day, the sad earnestness of his look and of his
voice had impressed her with all the overwhelming depth of his
own apprehensions.

Mr. Strong had advised both her and Ruth to be present at the
trial, though not informing her of his reasons for such a course,
and with great effort she resolved to comply with his request, for,

after all that she had undergone, she was unwilling to risk anything
for want of further endurance. Harry, indeed, would probably
see her, and suspect her agency in his defence, but the
crisis was too great, and the events which depended on the
morrow's doings were too momentous to admit of being counterpoised
by any scruples on these points, however commendable the
sentiment from which they sprung. Let him know all, if he
must. She asked nothing but to save him. Let the world deride,
if it would. She could bear even that, hut she could not bear the
reproaches of her own conscience, or the bitter grief of her heart,
if Harry were lost, and she had withheld any effort in his
behalf.

Ruth was eager to go. With her usually sanguine heart, she
believed that she could do something, she knew not what, to
assist the prisoner; and her confident anticipations strengthened
the heart of Gertrude, and emboldened her for the performance
of her passive, but painful task.

Van Vrank had continued to pay daily visits to the prisoners,
and contributed in every practicable way to their comfort, and
had given them what encouragement he dared to offer of a safe
deliverance; but Harry did not allow his mind to be dazzled by
a hope which he knew might prove entirely illusive. Yet life
had become doubly dear to him since he had suspected—for something
had awakened the suspicion—that his unavowed but powerful
benefactor was she to whom his heart had so long paid its
secret homage. Not that he by any means supposed his affection
to be reciprocated by Gertrude, for with his knowledge of her
generous and compassionate nature, he could account for her conduct
without resort to so pleasing a hypothesis. He did not
indeed suspect half that she had done and was doing for him—
he did not dream that she was in Canada, that she was near him,
that she had personally employed and consulted counsel in his
behalf, and, least of all, that she was to be in attendance upon his

trial; but if he had known all these things, he would still have
looked upon them as the results of a noble philanthropy alone.

The day and the hour so long anticipated came at last, and
Harry Vrail was taken from prison and conducted to the place
of trial. Though he went forth with sad forebodings of his return
in perhaps a few short hours as a condemned and doomed man,
yet he went with firm and elastic tread, and his face, radiant with
the fresh light of youth, was free from all trace of the anxiety
which, despite the trustful and resigned tenor of his contemplative
moments, now forced itself upon his mind. He saw with a
shudder the dread instrument of death as he passed it, but at the
next instant his eye rested tranquilly upon the calm blue sky,
from which it had been so long excluded, seeming to imbibe its
serenity and to reflect its radiance.

Apparelled with care for the occasion, yet without any approach
to gaudiness, the unconscious elegance and refinement of
his appearance, and his youthful and innocent look, seemed to
impress all beholders as he entered a crowded court-room, between
two grim custodians, and took his seat in the prisoner's
box, while his vigilant guards ranged themselves carefully on either
side.

Remote from him, heavily veiled, and with eyes veiled yet more
by streaming tears, two trembling females sat, amidst many others
of their sex, in a portion of the room allotted to ladies, and
which, as now, was often crowded during trials of great interest,
or when any distinguished forensic display was anticipated.

Everything was ready for the opening of the trial, and the process
of empanelling the jury was at once commenced, but was
greatly protracted by a free use on the part of Mr. Strong of the
prisoner's right of peremptory challenge.

Many were set aside whom the lawyer happened to recognize
as violent partisans of the government, and as vindictive opponents
of the revolutionists, and many more with whom he was not personally

acquainted, were refused on the advice of his secret agents
at hand, who knew or fancied some cause of distrust.

Some, again, the astute counsellor rejected without a question,
solely on account of their appearance, and before the panel was
finally filled, he had exhausted nearly the whole privilege, extensive
as it is, which the law humanely allows to every man who is
on trial for his life.

The prosecuting attorney, a harsh, severe man, of a very
pompous air, who had been accustomed to do up his work on
these state trials with very little opposition, and with every facility
from a willing court, was surprised to find, on the present
occasion, an array of the most eminent talent engaged for the
prisoner, numbering not less than four of the very élite of the profession.

This circumstance, and the vigilance used in empanelling the
jury, convinced him as he said in his opening address, that a
great effort was to be made to rob justice of a victim, which
attempt he should trust to the good sense and loyalty of the jurors
to defeat.

The prisoner, although young, he said, had been an influential
and leading officer of the brigand band which had invaded the
province, and although they might not be able to prove positively
that he bore a commission in the army, they would at least show
that he was an intimate and confidential friend of the chief of the
banditti, who, thanks to the intelligence of a Canadian jury, had
already paid the forfeit of his crimes.

The irascible attorney grew excited as he proceeded in his
remarks, seeming to wax wroth at the bare contemplation of the
prisoner's escape.

Why so unusual an effort was to be made in his behalf, he said,
glancing at the silent but powerful legal army opposed to him,
he could not imagine, and he would not trouble the jury by conjecturing.
It at least showed that the prisoner was a man of

means and influence, and, therefore, one of whom it was the more
necessary to make a striking example. The Fourth of July heroes
of Yankeedom, he said, had boasted over their wine cups how
their fathers had whipped the British, until some of them had
grown courageous enough to make an experiment of their valor
on Canadian soil. “Our soldiers,” he concluded, “have done
their duty in conquering and capturing them; it remains for us to
do ours.”

With great majesty of air, and with as much seeming confidence
in the success of the prosecution as if he were already
listening to the death-sentence from the court, the attorney sat
down and called, as his first witness, John Shay, by whom, he
said, he should prove the prisoner's confession, while taking refuge
in his house, that he was a member of the patriot army.

The circumstances of that confession, and the deceit and
treachery of Shay, which will be remembered by the reader, were
all well known to the defendant's counsel, who still hoped to make
a strong point on the non-identification of the accused as one of
the invaders. On merely legal exceptions, although prepared to
interpose a perfect net-work of these, they placed but little reliance,
for the court had again and again, in former trials, broken
down all these flimsy barriers. There was the less chance of
technical objections, because the indictment had been framed
under a new law, passed since the border troubles began, expressly
for the trial of citizens of the United States who had taken up
arms against Canada, and who had entered the province with
hostile intent. Shay testified positively and with great alacrity to
all which the prosecuting officer had expected. He fully identified
the prisoner as the man who had come to his house in the
evening, a few hours after the battle at Windmill Point, in company
with a negro, both being armed. Their fatigue, their hunger,
their anxiety to be rowed across the river, and, finally, Vrail's
confession to him that they were patriots, escaped from the defeated

army, were all positively and distinctly narrated, while
thousands of eager listeners held their breath to catch the fatal
testimony which fell from the witness.

He next proceeded to give the particulars of the arrest. He
left, he said, the defendant and the negro in his house, and went
to the “Point” for assistance. When he returned, accompanied
by soldiers, they fled, were pursued several miles, and were
arrested in the very act of launching a boat in which to cross the
river to the States. “If we had been three minutes later,” he
added, exultingly, “we should have lost them.”

The witness said nothing about his own pretence of friendship
for the fugitives, and for the patriot cause, by which he had won
their confidence, nor of his violated promise to aid in their escape;
nothing, in short, which could fasten upon himself the merited
charge of falsehood and treachery. He found it, indeed, an easy
and gratifying task to tell his story on its first direct recital, and
had begun to fancy himself quite a hero in the estimation of
the audience; but when the poor knave fell into the hands of Mr.
Strong on the cross-examination, both himself and his evidence
assumed a very different aspect.

Forced to testify to his own perfidy, and to his violated hospitality,
and driven, in the attempt to evade the truth, to a series of
contradictory and irreconcilable answers, the miserable man soon
found himself so thoroughly self-impeached, that even the prosecuting
attorney angrily dismissed him from the stand.

A gleam of hope electrified the heart of the prisoner and his
friends at this result, but other witnesses were at once brought
forward. The soldiers who had assisted at the capture of Vrail
successively came upon the stand, and swore to all the particulars
of the arrest, but the utter darkness of the night had prevented
any of them from seeing his face at the time so as to fully identify
it now. On reaching Prescott they had only seen his features
indistinctly as he passed into the jail, and on the ensuing morning,

when the prisoners were brought out, this man now on trial,
they said, was among them, and was pointed out to them as the
individual they had captured on the previous evening. This was
the extent of their testimony, and the evident wrath and chagrin
of the prosecutor showed very plainly that he considered it
of no value. It left everything uncertain. Even if the jury would
believe that the defendant was the person arrested by Shay and
his companions, there was no positive proof of his having been in
the battle. He had acknowledged nothing to the soldiers, and
Shay's testimony of his confession, on which so great reliance had
been placed, was shaken beyond all hope of reparation.

When the court, showing some impatience, asked the prosecutor
who was his next witness, and when that baffled gentleman
replied, with a very disconcerted air, that he did not know, the
exultant expression of Counsellor Strong and his associates showed
plainly that they considered the battle won. A breath of relief,
long suspended, went up from the heaving breast of the excited
prisoner, and Gertrude, straining eye and ear to catch every
favorable indication, almost swooned with the tumultuous emotions
of her heart.

At this moment the figure of the repudiated Shay, gliding
through the crowd, approached the chair of the attorney general;
his long arm, and his malign and cunning countenance were
stretched out towards that officer, and he whispered loud enough
to be heard half across the silent court room—

“Call Ruth Shay!”

Counsellor Strong started as if electrified by the words—he
glanced at Vrail and saw that his countenance suddenly changed
to an expression of alarm—he looked at Gertrude, and he saw
her head droop slowly to the rail before her.

“Who is she, and what does she know?” asked the prosecutor,
impatiently.

“She is my niece—she was present—she knows all.”

“Are you certain?” was the quick, earnest response of the
eager lawyer.

“Certain.”

“Did she hear the confession you speak of?”

“Yes—yes, everything—everything.”

With all the exultation of look which the prisoner's counsel
had so lately exhibited, but had now, alas! lost, their opponent
passed the name of the new witness to the crier of the court, and
at the next moment the arches of the building were ringing with
the words—

“Ruth Shay!”

Again and again was the summons repeated without response.

All eyes were turned towards the quarter where the ladies were
assembled, and many saw a trembling child hiding her face in the
lap of an older, but equally terrified companion, who was idly
trying to shield her from view.