Mrs. Halliburton's Troubles Part 102

"Could a woman's feeble hand inflict such injuries?" debated the solicitor.

"'Feeble' be hanged!" politely rejoined the sergeant. "Some women have the fists of men; and the strength of 'em, too. You don't know 'em as we do. A desperate woman will do anything. And Anthony Dare, remember, had not his strength in him that night."

Mr. Winthorne shook his head. "That girl has no look of ferocity about her. I should question it being her. Let's see--what is her name?"

"Listen!" returned the sergeant. "When you have had half as much to do with people as I have, you'll have learnt not to go by looks. Her name is Caroline Mason."

At that moment the cathedral bells rang out, announcing the return of the procession, the advent of the judges. As if the sound reminded the lawyer of the speed of time, he hastily went on his way; leaving the sergeant to use his eyes and ears at the expense of the crowd.

"I wonder how the prisoners in the gaol feels?" remarked a woman whom the sergeant recognised as being no other than Mrs. Cross. She had just come out of a warehouse with her supply of work for the ensuing week.

"Ah, poor creatures!" responded another of the group, and _that_ was Mrs. Brumm. "I wonder how young Dare likes it!"

"Or how old Dare likes it--if he can hear 'em all the way up at his office. They'll know their fate soon, them two."

In close vicinity to this colloquy was a young woman, drawn against the wall, under shelter of a projecting doorway. Her once good-looking face was haggard, and her clothes were scanty. It was for this reason, perhaps, that she appeared to shun observation. Sergeant Delves, apparently without any other design than that of working his way leisurely through the throng, edged himself up to her.

"Looking out for the show, Miss Mason?"

Caroline turned her spiritless eyes upon him. "I'm waiting till there's a way cleared for me to get through, without pus.h.i.+ng against folks and contaminating 'em. What's the show to me, or me to it?"

"At the last a.s.sizes, in March, when the judges came in, young Anthony Dare made one in the streets, looking on," resumed the sergeant, chatting affably. "I saw him and spoke to him. And now he is gone where there's no shows to see."

She made no reply.

"The women there," pointing his thumb at the group of talkers hard by, "are saying that Herbert Dare won't like the sound of the college bells.--Hey, me! Look at those young toads of college boys, just let out of school!" broke off the sergeant, as a tribe of some twenty of the king's scholars came fighting and elbowing their way through the throng to the front. "They are just like so many wild colts! Maybe the prisoner, Herbert Dare, is now casting his thoughts back to the time when he made one of the band, and was as free from care as they are.

It's not so long ago."

Caroline Mason asked a question somewhat abruptly. "Will he be found guilty, sir, do you think?"

The sergeant turned the tail of his keen eye upon her, and answered the question by asking another. "Do you?"

She shook her head. "I don't think he was guilty."

"You don't?"

"No, I don't. Why should one brother kill another?"

"Very true," coughed the sergeant. "But somebody must have done it. If Herbert Dare did not, who did?"

"Ah! who did? I'd like to know," she pa.s.sionately added. "He had folks in this town that owed him grudges, had Mr. Anthony Dare."

"If my vision didn't deceive me, I saw you talking to him that very same night," carelessly observed the sergeant.

"Did you see me?" she rejoined, apparently as much at ease as the sergeant himself. "I had to do an errand at that end of the town, and I met him, and told him what he was. I hadn't spoke to him for months and months; for years, I think. I had slipped into doors, down entries, anywhere to avoid him, if I saw him coming; but a feeling came over me to speak to him then. I'm glad I did. I hope the truths I said to him went along with him to enliven him on his journey!"

"Did you see him after that, later in the evening?" resumed the inspector, putting the question sociably, and stretching his neck up to obtain a view of something at a distance.

"No, I didn't," she replied. "But I would, if I had thought it was going to be his last. I'd have bade him remember all his good works where he was going to. I'd almost have went with him, I would, to have heard how he answered for them, up there."

Caroline Mason glanced upwards to indicate the sky, when a loud flourish of trumpets from the advancing heralds sounded close upon them. As they rode up at a foot pace, they dropped their trumpets, and the mounted javelin-men quickly followed, their javelins in rest. A carriage or two; a few more officials; and then advanced the equipage of the high sheriff. Only one of the judges was in it, fully robed: a fine man, with a benign countenance. A grave smile was on it as he spoke to the sheriff, who sat opposite to him, his chaplain by his side.

Sergeant Delves's attention was distracted for an instant, and when he looked round again, Caroline Mason had disappeared. He just caught sight of her in the distance, winding her way through the crowd, her head down.

"Did she do it, or did she not?" cried the sergeant, in soliloquy. "Go on, go on, my lady, for the present; you are about to be a bit looked after."

How _did_ the prisoners feel, and Herbert Dare amongst them, as the joyous sounds, outside, fell upon their ears; the blast of the trumpets, the sweetness of the bells, the stir of life: penetrating within the walls of the city and county prisons? Did they feel that the pomp and show, run after as a holiday sight, was only a cruel advent to them?--that the formidable and fiery vision in the scarlet robe and flowing wig, who sat in the carriage, bending his serene face upon the mob, collected to stare and shout, might prove the p.r.o.nouncer of their doom?--a doom that should close the portals of this world upon them, and open those of eternity!

CHAPTER X.

THE TRIAL.

Tuesday morning was the day fixed for the trial of Herbert Dare. You might have walked upon the people's heads in the vicinity of the Guildhall, for all the town wished to get in to hear it. Of course only a very small portion of the town, relatively speaking, could have its wish, or succeed in fighting a way to a place. Of the rest, some went back to their homes, disappointed and exploding; and the rest collected outside and blocked up the street. The police had their work cut out that day; whilst the javelin-men, heralding in the judges, experienced great difficulty in keeping clear the pa.s.sages. The heat in court would be desperate as the day advanced.

Sir William Leader, as senior judge, took his seat in the criminal court. It was he whom you saw in the sheriff's carriage on Sat.u.r.day. The same benignant face was bent upon the crowded court that had been bent upon the street mob; the same penetrating eye; the same grave, calm bearing. The prisoner was immediately placed at the bar, and all eyes, strange or familiar, were strained to look at him. They saw a tall, handsome young man, looking too gentlemanly to stand in the felon's dock. He was habited in deep mourning. His countenance, usually somewhat conspicuous for its bright complexion, was pale, probably from the moment's emotion, and his white handkerchief was lifted to his mouth as he moved forward; otherwise he was calm. Old Anthony Dale was in court, looking far more agitated than his son. Preliminaries were gone through, and the trial began.

"Prisoner at the bar, how say you? Are you guilty, or not guilty?"

Herbert Dare raised his eyes fearlessly, and pleaded in a firm tone:

"Not Guilty!"

The leading counsel for the prosecution, Serjeant Seeitall, stated the case. His address occupied some time, and he then proceeded to call witnesses. One of the first examined was Betsy Carter. She deposed to the facts of having sat up with the lady's-maid and Joseph, until the return of Mr. and Mrs. Dare and their daughter; to having then gone into the dining-room with a light to look for Mr. Dare's pipe, which she had left there in the morning, when cleaning the room. "In moving forward with the candle, I saw something dark on the ground," continued Betsy, who, when her first timidity had gone off, seemed inclined to be communicative. "At the first glance, I thought it was one of the gentlemen gone to sleep there; but when I stooped down with the light, I saw it was the face of the dead. Awful, it looked!"

"What did you next do?" demanded the examining counsel.

"Screeched out, gentlemen," responded Betsy.

"What else?"

"I went out of the room, screeching to Joseph in the hall, and master came in from outside the front door, where he was waiting, all peaceful and ignorant, for his pipe, little thinking what there was so close to him. I screeched out all the more, gentlemen, when I remembered the quarrel that had took place at dinner that afternoon, and I knew it was n.o.body but Mr. Herbert that had done the murder."

The witness was sharply told to confine herself to evidence.

"It couldn't be n.o.body else," retorted Betsy, who, once set going, was a match for any cross-examiner. "There was the cloak to prove it. Mr.

Herbert had gone out in the cloak that very night, and the poor dead gentleman was lying on it. Which proves it must have come off in the scuffle between 'em."

The fact of the quarrel, the facts connected with the cloak, as well as all other facts, had been mentioned by the learned Serjeant Seeitall in his opening address. The witness was questioned as to what she knew of the quarrel: but it appeared that she had not been present; consequently could not testify to it. The cloak she could say more about, and spoke of it confidently as Mr. Herbert's.

"How did you know the cloak, found under the dead man, was Mr.

Herbert's?" interposed the prisoner's counsel, Mr. Chattaway.

"Because I did," returned the witness.

"I ask you how you knew it?"