Then, after the other prisoners had pleaded, Campion delivered a final defence to the jury, with a solemnity that seemed to belong to a judge rather than a criminal. The babble of tongues that had continued most of the day was hushed to a profound silence in court as he stood and spoke, for the sincerity and simplicity of the priest were evident to all, and combined with his eloquence and his strange attractive personality, dominated all but those whose minds were already made up before entering the court. "What charge this day you sustain," began the priest, in a steady low voice, with his searching eyes bent on the faces before him, "and what account you are to render at the dreadful Day of Judgment, whereof I could wish this also were a mirror, I trust there is not one of you but knoweth. I doubt not but in like manner you forecast how dear the innocent is to God, and at what price He holdeth man's blood. Here we are accused and impleaded to the death,"--he began to raise his voice a little--"here you do receive our lives into your custody; here must be your device, either to restore them or condemn them. We have no whither to appeal but to your consciences; we have no friends to make there but your heeds and discretions." Then he touched briefly on the evidence, showing how faulty and circumstantial it was, and urged them to remember that a man's life by the very constitution of the realm must not be sacrificed to mere probabilities or presumptions; then he showed the untrustworthiness of his accusers, how one had confessed himself a murderer, and how another was an atheist. Then he ended with a word or two of appeal. "God give you grace," he cried, "to weigh our causes aright, and have respect to your own consciences; and so I will keep the jury no longer. I commit the rest to God, and our convictions to your good discretions." When the jury had retired, and all the judges but one had left the bench until the jury should return, Anthony sat back in his place, his heart beating and his eyes looking restlessly now on the prisoners, now on the door where the jury had gone out, and now on Judge Ayloff, whom he knew a little, and who sat only a few feet away from him on one side. He could hear the lawyers sitting below the judge talking among themselves; and presently one of them leaned over to him. "Good-day, Mr. Norris," he said, "you have come to see an acquittal, I doubt not. No man can be in two minds after what we have heard; at least concerning Mr. Campion. We all think so, here, at any rate."