University of Virginia Library

31. CHAPTER XXXI.
THE TRIAL CONCLUDED.

I DO not know how much interest the “gentle
reader” may feel in Bud. With me, he is a
favorite. And I venture to hope that there are
some Buddhists among my readers who will wish
the contradictoriness of his actions explained.
The first dash of disappointment had well-nigh upset him.
And when a man concludes to throw overboard his good
resolutions, he always seeks to avoid the witness of those resolutions.
Hence Bud, after that distressful Tuesday evening on
which Miss Martha had given him “the sack,” wished to see
Ralph less than any one else. And yet when he came to suspect
Small's villainy, his whole nature revolted at it. But having
broken with Ralph, he thought it best to maintain an attitude
of apparent hostility, that he might act as a detective, and, perhaps,
save his friend from the mischief that threatened him.
As soon as he heard of Ralph's arrest, he determined to make

Walter Johnson tell his own secret in court, because he knew
that it would be best for Ralph that Walter should tell it.
Bud's telling at second-hand would not be conclusive. And he
sincerely desired to save Walter from prison. For Walter Johnson
was the victim of Dr. Small, or of Dr. Small and such novels
as “The Pirate's Bride,” “Claude Duval,” “The Wild Rover of
the West Indies,” and the cheap biographies of such men as
Murrell. Small found him with his imagination inflamed by
the history of such heroes, and opened to him the path to glory
for which he longed

The whole morning after Ralph's arrest, Bud was working
on Walter's conscience and his fears. The poor fellow, unable
to act for himself, was torn asunder between the old ascendency
of Small and the new ascendency of Bud Means. Bud finally
frightened him, by the fear of the penitentiary, into going to
the place of trial. But once inside the door, and once in sight
of Small, who was more to him than God, or, rather, more to
him than the devil—for the devil was Walter's God, or, perhaps,
I should say, Walter's God was a devil—once in sight of Small,
he refused to move an inch farther. And Bud, after all his
perseverance, was about to give up in sheer despair.

Fortunately, just at that moment Small's desire to relieve
himself from the taint of suspicion and to crush Ralph
as completely as possible, made him overshoot the mark by
asking that Walter be called to the stand, as we have before
recounted. He knew that he had no tool so supple as the
cowardly Walter. In the very language of the request, he had
given Walter an intimation of what he wanted him to swear
to. Walter listened to Small's words as to his doom. He felt
that he should die of indecision. The perdition of a man of

his stamp is to have to make up his mind. Such men generally
fall back on some one more positive, and take all their resolutions
ready-made. But here Walter must decide for himself. For
the constable was already calling his name; the court, the
spectators, and, most of all, Dr. Small, were waiting for him.
He moved forward mechanically through the dense crowd, Bud
following part of the way to whisper, “Tell the truth or go
to penitentiary.” Walter shook and shivered at this. The
witness with difficulty held up his hand long enough to be sworn.

“Please tell the court,” said Bronson, “whether you know
anything of the whereabouts of Dr. Small on the night of the
robbery at Peter Schroeder's.”

Small had detected Walter's agitation, and, taking alarm, had
edged his way around so as to stand full in Walter's sight, and
there, with keen, magnetic eye on the weak orbs of the young
man, he was able to assume his old position, and sway the fellow
absolutely.

“On the night of the robbery”—Walter's voice was weak,
but he seemed to be reading his answer out of Small's eyes—
“on the night of the robbery Dr. Small came home before—”
here the witness stopped and shook and shivered
again. For Bud, detecting the effect of Small's gaze, had
pushed his great hulk in front of Small, and had fastened his
eyes on Walter with a look that said, “Tell the truth or go
to penitentiary.”

“I can't, I can't. O God! what shall I do?” the witness
exclaimed, answering the look of Bud. For it seemed to him
that Bud had spoken. To the people and the court this agitation
was inexplicable. Squire Hawkins's wig got awry, his glass
eye turned in toward his nose, and he had great difficulty in

keeping his teeth from falling out. The excitement became painfully
intense. Ralph was on his feet, looking at the witness,
and feeling that somehow Bud and Dr. Small—his good angel
and his demon—were playing an awful game, of which he was
the stake. The crowd swayed to and fro, but remained utterly silent,
waiting to hear the least whisper from the witness, who stood
trembling a moment with his hands over his face, and then fainted.

The fainting of a person in a crowd is a signal for everybody
else to make fools of themselves. There was a rush
toward the fainting man, there was a cry for water. Everybody
asked everybody else to open the window, and everybody wished
everybody else to stand back and give him air. But nobody
opened the window, and nobody stood back. The only perfectly
cool man in the room was Small. With a quiet air of professional
authority he pushed forward and felt the patient's pulse,
remarking to the court that he thought it was a sudden attack
of fever with delirium. When Walter revived, Dr. Small would
have removed him, but Ralph insisted that his testimony should
be heard. Under pretense of watching his patient, Small kept
close to him. And Walter began the same old story about Dr.
Small's having arrived at the office before eleven o'clock, when
Bud came up behind the doctor and fastened his eyes on the
witness with the same significant look, and Walter, with visions
of the penitentiary before him, halted, stammered, and seemed
about to faint again.

“If the court please,” said Bronson, “this witness is evidently
intimidated by that stout young man,” pointing to Bud. “I have
seen him twice interrupt witness's testimony by casting threatening
looks at him. I trust the court will have him removed from
the court-room.”

After a few moments' consultation, during which Squire
Hawkins held his wig in place with one hand and alternately
adjusted his eye and his spectacles with the other, the magistrates,
who were utterly bewildered by the turn things were taking,
decided that it could do no harm, and that it was best to try
the experiment of removing Bud. Perhaps Johnson would then
be able to get through with his testimony. The constable therefore
asked Bud if he would please leave the room. Bud cast
one last look at the witness and walked out like a captive
bear.

Ralph stood watching the receding form of Bud. The emergency
had made him as cool as Small ever was. Bud stopped
at the door, where he was completely out of sight of the witness,
concealed by the excited spectators, who stood on the benches to
see what was going on in front.

“The witness will please proceed,” said Bronson.

“If the court please”—it was Ralph who spoke—“I believe I
have as much at stake in this trial as any one. That witness is
evidently intimidated. But not by Mr. Means. I ask that Dr.
Small be removed out of sight of the witness.”

“A most extraordinary request, truly.” This was what
Small's bland countenance said; he did not open his lips.

“It's no more than fair,” said Squire Hawkins, adjusting his
wig, “that the witness be relieved of everything that anybody
might think affects his voracity in this matter.”

Dr. Small, giving Walter one friendly, appealing look, moved
back by the door, and stood alongside Bud, as meek, quiet, and
disinterested as any man in the house.

“The witness will now proceed with his testimony.” This time
it was Squire Hawkins who spoke. Bronson had been attacked

with a suspicion that this witness was not just what he wanted,
and had relapsed into silence.

Walter's struggle was by no means ended by the disappearance
of Small and Bud. There came the recollection of his mother's
stern face—a face which had never been a motive toward the
right, but only a goad to deception. What would she say if he
should confess? Just as he had recovered himself, and was about
to repeat the old lie which had twice died upon his lips at the
sight of Bud's look, he caught sight of another face, which made
him tremble again. It was the lofty and terrible countenance of
Mr. Soden. One might have thought, from the expression it wore,
that the seven last vials were in his hands, the seven apocalyptic
trumpets waiting for his lips, and the seven thunders sitting upon
his eyebrows. The moment that Walter saw him he smelled the
brimstone on his own garments, he felt himself upon the crumbling
brink of the precipice, with perdition below him. Now I am
sure that “Brother Sodoms” were not made wholly in vain. There
are plenty of mean-spirited men like Walter Johnson, whose feeble
consciences need all the support they can get from the fear
of perdition, and who are incapable of any other conception
of it than a coarse and materialistic one. Let us set it
down to the credit of Brother Sodom, with his stiff stock, his
thunderous face, and his awful walk, that his influence over
Walter was on the side of truth.

“Please proceed,” said Squire Hawkins to Walter. The
Squire's wig lay on one side, he had forgotten to adjust his
eye, and he leaned forward, tremulous with interest.

“Well, then,” said Walter, looking not at the court nor at
Bronson nor at the prisoner, but furtively at Mr. Soden—
“well, then, if I must”—and Mr. Soden's awful face seemed

to answer that he surely must—“well, then, I hope you won't
send me to prison”— this to Squire Hawkins, whose face
re-assured him—“but—oh! I don't see how I can!” But one
look at Mr. Soden assured him that he could and that he must,
and so, with an agony painful to the spectators, he told the story
in driblets. How, while yet in Lewisburg, he had been made a
member of a gang of which Small was chief; how they concealed
from him the names of all the band except six, of whom the
Joneses and Small were three.

Here there was a scuffle at the door. The court demanded
silence.

“Dr. Small's trying to git out, plague take him,” said Bud,
who stood with his back planted against the door. “I'd like
the court to send and git his trunk afore he has a chance to
burn up all the papers that's in it.”

“Constable, you will arrest Dr. Small, Peter Jones, and William
Jones. Send two deputies to bring Small's trunk into court,”
said Squire Underwood.

The prosecuting attorney was silent.

Walter then told of the robbery at Schroeder's, told where he
and Small had whittled the fence while the Joneses entered the
house, and confirmed Ralph's story by telling how they had seen
Ralph in a fence-corner, and how they had met the basket-maker
on the hill.

“To be sure,” said the old man, who had not ventured to hold
up his head, after he was arrested, until Walter began his testimony.

Walter felt inclined to stop, but he could not do it, for there
stood Mr. Soden, looking to him like a messenger from the skies,
or the bottomless pit, sent to extort the last word from his guilty

soul. He felt that he was making a clean breast of it at the risk
of perdition, with the penitentiary thrown in, if he faltered.
And so he told the whole thing as though it had been the day of
doom, and by the time he was through, Small's trunk was in
court.

Here a new hubbub took place at the door. It was none other
than the crazy pauper, Tom Bifield, who personated General
Andrew Jackson in the poor-house. He had caught some inkling
of the trial, and had escaped in Bill Jones's absence. His red
plume was flying, and in his tattered and filthy garb he was indeed
a picturesque figure.

“Squar,” said he, elbowing his way through the crowd, “I kin
tell you somethin'. I'm Gineral Andrew Jackson. Lost my
head at Bueny Visty. This head growed on. It a'n't good fer
much. One side's tater. But t'other's sound as a nut. Now, I
kin give you information.”

Bronson, with the quick perceptions of a politician, had begun
to see which way future winds would probably blow. “If the
court please,” he said, “this man is not wholly sane, but we
might get valuable information out of him. I suggest that his
testimony be taken for what it is worth.”

“No, you don't swar me,” broke in the lunatic. `Not if I
know's myself. You see, when a feller's got one side of his head
tater, he's mighty onsartain like. You don't swar me, fer I can't
tell what minute the tater side'll begin to talk. I'm talkin' out
of the lef' side now, and I'm all right. But you don't swar me.
But ef you'll send some of your constables out to the barn at the
pore-house and look under the hay-mow in the north-east corner,
you'll find some things may be as has been a missin' fer some
time. And that a'n't out of the tater side nuther.”

Meantime Bud did not rest. Hearing the nature of the testimony
given by Hank Banta before he entered, he attacked Hank
and vowed he'd send him to prison if he didn't make a clean
breast. Hank was a thorough coward, and, now that his friends
were prisoners, was ready enough to tell the truth if he could be
protected from prosecution. Seeing the disposition of the prosecuting
attorney, Bud got from him a promise that he would do
what he could to protect Hank. That worthy then took the
stand, confessed his lie, and even told the inducement which Mr.
Pete Jones had offered him to perjure himself.

“To be sure,” said Pearson.

Squire Hawkins, turning his right eye upon him, while the left
looked at the ceiling, said: “Be careful, Mr. Pearson, or I shall
have to punish you for contempt.”

“Why, Squar, I didn't know 'twas any sin to hev a healthy
contemp' fer sech a thief as Jones!”

The Squire looked at Mr. Pearson severely, and the latter, feeling
that he had committed some offense without knowing it, subsided
into silence.

Bronson now had a keen sense of the direction of the gale.

“If the court please,” said he, “I have tried to do my duty in
this case. It was my duty to prosecute Mr. Hartsook, however
much I might feel assured that he was innocent, and that he
would be able to prove his innocence. I now enter a nolle in his
case and that of John Pearson, and I ask that this court adjourn
until to-morrow, in order to give me time to examine the evidence
in the case of the other parties under arrest. I am proud to think
that my efforts have been the means of sifting the matter to the
bottom, of freeing Mr. Hartsook from suspicion, and of detecting
the real criminals.”

“Ugh!” said Mr. Pearson, who conceived a great dislike to
Bronson.

“The court,” said Squire Hawkins, “congratulates Mr. Hartsook
on his triumphant acquittal. He is discharged from the bar
of this court, and from the bar of public sentiment, without a suspicion
of guilt. Constable, discharge Ralph Hartsook and John
Pearson.”

Old Jack Means, who had always had a warm side for the
master, now proposed three cheers for Mr. Hartsook, and they
were given with a will by the people who would have hanged him
an hour before.

Mrs. Means gave it as her opinion that “Jack Means allers wuz
a fool!”

“This court,” said Dr. Underwood, “has one other duty to perform
before adjourning for the day. Recall Hannah Thomson.”

“I jist started her on ahead to git supper and milk the cows,”
said Mrs. Means. “A'n't agoin' to have her loafin' here all day.”

“Constable, recall her. This court can not adjourn until she
returns!”

Hannah had gone but a little way, and was soon in the presence
of the court, trembling for fear of some new calamity.

“Hannah Thomson”—it was Squire Underwood who spoke—
“Hannah Thomson, this court wishes to ask you one or two
questions.”

“Yes, sir,” but her voice died to a whisper.

“How old did you say you were?”

“Eighteen, sir, last October.”

“Can you prove your age?”

“Yes, sir—by my mother.”

“For how long are you bound to Mr. Means?”

“Till I'm twenty-one.”

“This court feels in duty bound to inform you that, according
to the laws of Indiana, a woman is of age at eighteen, and as no
indenture could be made binding after you had reached your
majority, you are the victim of a deception. You are free, and
if it can be proven that you have been defrauded by a willful
deception, a suit for damages will lie.”

“Ugh!” said Mrs. Means. “You're a purty court, a'n't you,
Dr. Underwood?”

“Be careful, Mrs. Means, or I shall have to fine you for contempt
of court.”

But the people, who were in the cheering humor, cheered
Hannah and the justices, and then cheered Ralph again. Granny
Sanders shook hands with him, and allers knowed he'd come out
right. It allers 'peared like as if Dr. Small warn't jist the sort to
tie to, you know. And old John Pearson went home, after drinking
two or three glasses of Welch's whisky, keeping time to an
imaginary triumphal march, and feeling prouder than he had ever
felt since he fit the Britishers under Scott at Lundy's Lane. He
told his wife that the master had jist knocked the hind-sights offen
that air young lawyer from Lewisburg.

Walter was held to bail that he might appear as a witness, and
Ralph might have sent his aunt a Roland for an Oliver. But he
only sent a note to his uncle, asking him to go Walter's bail. If
he had been resentful, he could not have wished for a more complete
revenge than the day had brought.