Love stories; Political fiction; Southern States -- Fiction
“Judge Hollis,” said Caleb quietly, “if I told you where I was, another
witness would have to be called, and neither you nor I would wish to
call that witness.”
The judge looked at him steadily; Caleb returned the look as steadily,
and there was a heavy silence.
“By the Lord Harry!” said the judge at last, “I believe you’d let ’em
hang you rather than give in a hair’s breadth.”
Then Caleb smiled his rare sweet smile.
The second long week of the trial wore to its close, and the web of
circumstantial evidence was clinging fast about the prisoner. Witnesses
had testified to his character and against it. The name of Jean
Bartlett ran around the court, and some men testified to a belief that
Caleb was the father of the child he had befriended. Judge Hollis did
not attempt to have the testimony ruled out; he let it go in, sitting
back with folded arms and a grim smile. He cross-examined Jacob Eaton
twice, but made nothing of it. Jacob was an excellent witness, and
he showed no passion, even when witnesses described the duel and his
conduct to show his motive in attacking Trench.
Sunday night Judge Hollis received a telephone message from Colonel
Royall, and, after his early supper, the judge ordered around his
rockaway and drove over, with Lysander beside him to hold the reins.
He found Mrs. Eaton in the drawing-room with Diana, and was coldly
received by Jacob’s mother; she resented any attempt to line up forces
against her son, and she regarded the defender of Caleb Trench as an
enemy to society. The judge bowed before her grimly.
“I thought you were in the city, madam,” he remarked.
Mrs. Eaton threw up her hands. “With that mob loose, and the soldiers?
My dear Judge! I wouldn’t stay for a million, and I’m a poor woman.
Good gracious, think of it! It’s just as I’ve always said,--you go on
letting in the shiploads of anarchists and we’ll all be murdered in our
beds.”
“Madam,” said the judge grimly, “the only thing I ever let in is the
cat. Sarah and the niggers look after the front door.”
Mrs. Eaton raised her eyebrows. “I can’t understand you,” she said,
with distant politeness; “I refer to immigration.”
“And I refer to immoderation, madam,” snapped the judge.
Diana intervened. “Pa wants you,” she said sweetly, and went with him
across the hall to the library. At the door she paused. “Judge Hollis,”
she said, “does the trial hinge on the question of the time in the
basement--before--before Mr. Trench went up-stairs?”
The judge scowled. “It does,” said he flatly, “and Caleb’s a fool.”
Diana smiled faintly; she looked unusually lovely and very grave.
“Judge,” she said, “no matter what pa says, I’ll do it all; he’s
demurred,” and with this enigmatical sentence she thrust the judge
inside the door and closed it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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