He was in an unfortunate position, it seemed, when everything appeared to work to his disadvantage, and help throw suspicion on his movements, and yet he dared not turn the needed light on them. He knew he was safe, so far as Sally was concerned, in regard to meeting her at the toll-gate, and the idle threats he had uttered against the Squire in the first heat of passion and jealousy. His enmity toward his uncle was too well known, however, to escape comment, and was easily proven, along with sundry angry words he had uttered against his kinsman when first he had left his uncle's roof, words that had lost nothing of their sharpness by the lapse of time, and were now repeated with such embellishments that even the speaker had difficulty in recalling or recognizing the original form in which they had been first uttered. Moreover, the great benefits that the nephew would derive from his uncle's death, should it occur before a marriage could take place, were clearly brought forth, and a strong incentive shown for the commission of such a deed, at the especial time it occurred--the eve of the Squire's wedding. When the evidence had been gathered--it was scant enough at best, and sadly damaging,--the case was presented to the jury by the speakers on each side, with facts so skilfully juggled, now and then, that an impartial listener would scarcely know how to place them aright. Sometimes flowery rhetorical effects were used where facts were few, that words might count instead, until there seemed never to have lived so just, upright and beloved a man as the squire, or so damnable and blood-thirsty a villain as his nephew. Sally came to court each day, along with Sophronia and her father. The three sat anxiously throughout the trial, hopeful and despondent by turns, as the prisoner was upheld or denounced, one hearer, at least, never wavering in the belief of his innocence from beginning to end. Late one afternoon the case was finished and submitted to the jury, but scarcely a soul quitted the courtroom, so deep an interest was felt, each one remaining, impatiently waiting for the verdict, which might come early or late, no man knew. When the doors had closed upon the retiring jury, the Judge picked up a newspaper on his desk, and leaning back in his chair began to read, while Sally, noting the act, wondered within herself how one could seem so calm and indifferent, when a man's very life hung trembling in the scales of justice. Her own brain was in a whirl of excitement and anxiety. She was scarcely able to think connectedly, and to her narrowed range of thought it seemed the very world must pause in anxiety while so weighty a matter was in the balance. The afternoon grew on apace. The dull gray shadows within the corners of the courtroom deepened and spread until the rows of expectant faces became a blurred and indistinct mass, except where the bands of light, falling through the windows, gave them a certain ashen pallor.