A loud murmur was now heard from without; the marshal's men, red and perspiring, cleared a thread-like path, and the prisoner, accompanied by his son-in-law, entered the Hall. He was dressed in black, with carefully powdered hair. Quiet, cool, smiling, and collected, he was brought to the bar, when, having taken his place, bowed to the judges, and greeted his counsel, he turned slightly and surveyed with his composed face and his extremely keen black eyes the throng that with intentness looked on him in turn. It was by no means their first encounter of eyes. The preliminaries of that famous trial had been many and prolonged. From the prisoner's arrival in April under military escort to the present moment, through the first arraignment at that bar, the assembling of the Grand Jury, the tedious waiting for Wilkinson's long-deferred arrival from New Orleans, the matter of the subpoena to the President with which the country rang, the adjournment from June to August, the victory gained by the defence in the exclusion of Wilkinson's evidence, and the clamour of the two camps into which the city was divided,--through all this had been manifest the prisoner's deliberate purpose and attempt to make every fibre of a personality ingratiating beyond that of most, tell in its own behalf. He had able advocates, but none more able than Aaron Burr. His day and time was, on the whole, a time astonishingly fluid and naïve, and he impressed it. There was in this moment, therefore, no novelty of encounter between him and the stare of the opposing throng. He was not seeing them, nor they him, for the first time. Yet the situation had its high intensity. This day was the beginning of the actual trial, and only the day which brought the verdict could outweigh it in importance. This was the lighting of the lamp that was to search out mysteries; this was the bending of the bow; this was the first rung of the ladder which might lead--where? As John Marshall's voice was heard from the bench and the prisoner turned from his steadfast contemplation of the throng, a psychic wave overflowed and lifted all the great assembly. This was spectacle, this was drama! The oldest of all the first principles stirred under the stimulus, and with savage naturalness sucked in the sense of pageant. The court was opened. Counsel on both sides brought forward and disposed of a minor point or two, then, amid a silence so great that the twittering of the martins outside the windows seemed importunate and shrill, proclamation was made, the prisoner stood up, and the indictment was read.