The jury-room had evidently not been furnished by a ring. There was a long table for debate, twelve hard chairs for repose, twelve spittoons for luxury, and a clock. The jury sat in silence for a few moments, as old Captain Nourse, who had them in his keeping, and eyed them as if he was afraid that he might lose one of them in a crack and be held accountable on his bond, rattled away at the unruly lock. Looking at them then, you would have seen faces all of a New England cast but one. There was a tall, powerful negro called George Washington, a man well known in this county town, to which he had come, as driftwood from the storm of war, in '65. Some of the "boys" had heard him, in a great prayer-meeting in Washington--a city which he always spoke of as his "namesake"--at the time of the great review, say, in his strong voice, with that pathetic quaver in it: "Like as de parched an' weary traveller hangs his harp upon de winder, an' sighs for oysters in de desert, so I longs to res' my soul an' my foot in Mass'chusetts;" and they were so delighted with him that they invited him on the spot to go home with them, and took up a collection to pay his fare, and so he was a public character. As for his occupation--when the census-taker, with a wink to the boys in the store, had asked him what it was, he had said, in that same odd tone: "Putties up glass a little--white-washes a little--" and, when the man had made a show of writing all that down, "preaches a little." He might have said "preaches a big," for you could hear him half a mile away. The foreman was a retired sea-captain. "Good cap'n--Cap'n Thomas," one of his neighbors had said of him. "Allers gits good ships--never hez to go huntin' 'round for a vessel. But it is astonishin' what differences they is! Now there's Cap'n A. K. P. Bassett, down to the West Harbor. You let it git 'round that Cap'n A. K. P. is goin' off on a Chiny voyage, and you'll see half a dozen old shays to onct, hitched all along his fence of an arternoon, and wimmen inside the house, to git Cap'n A. K. P. to take their boys. But you let Cap'n Thomas give out that he wants boys, and he hez to glean 'em--from the poor-house, and from step-mothers, and where he can: the wimmen knows! Still," he added, "Cap'n Thomas's a good cap'n. I've nothin' to say ag'in him. He's smart!" * * * * * "Gentlemen," said the foreman, when the officer, at last, had securely locked them in, "shall we go through the formality of a ballot? If the case were a less serious one, we might have rendered a verdict in our seats." "What's the use foolin' 'round ballotin'?" said a thick-set butcher. "Ain't we all o' one mind?" "It is for you to say, gentlemen," said the foreman. "I shouldn't want to have it go abroad that we had not acted formally, if there was any one disposed to cavil."