He did his best, that bungling young attorney. He tried to take advantage of technicalities, but Job utterly forbade that. If righteousness and God could not clear him, nothing else could. The defense was lame, but it proved that some people believed in Job and loved him. Tim's father told, between his tears, the story of "Tim's praist." Aunty Perkins and the preacher spoke ringing words for him. From the Yellow Jacket men came and defended his noble life. But it all went for naught with that jury. It was facts, not sentiment, they wanted. All this might be true, but if Job Malden had done the awful deed which the evidence went to show, then these things only made his crime the blacker. The defense finished at noon, and the lawyers began their pleas at one o'clock. They hardly needed to speak--Grizzly county had tried the case and the verdict was in. Yet they spoke. How eloquently the prosecuting attorney showed the influence of heredity--that the evil in the father would show itself some day in the boy! How he pictured the temporary religious change in Job's life, and then his relapse as the old fever came back into his blood! He had relapsed before, they all knew. He did not doubt his temporary goodness; but love is stronger than fear and hatred than integrity, and meeting Jane in the valley had roused all the old passion. Out on the cliff they had walked, they had quarreled, all the old fire of his father had come back--perhaps the boy was not to blame--and, standing there alone with the girl who would not promise to be his wife, in his rage he had struck her, and over the cliff she had gone, down, down, on the cruel rocks, to her death, and he had fled over the mountains till, goaded by conscience, haunted by awful guilt, he had come home and given himself up. The crowd shuddered as he spoke. Tom Reed fainted, Andrew Malden grew deathly white and raised his wan hand in protest, but still the speaker kept on. Job listened as if it were of another he spoke. He could see it all--how awful it was!--and it was Jane and he had done it! He almost believed he had; that man who stood there, carrying the whole throng with him, made it so clear. The voice ceased. Then Job roused himself. The consciousness that it was all false, terribly false, came over him, and he leaned hard on God. The attorney for the defense said but a word. For a moment it thrilled the multitude. It was a strange speech. This is what he said: "Your honor and gentlemen of the jury, the only defense I have is the character of the young man. I can say nothing more than you have heard to show how far beneath him is such a crime as this. I know you doubt his word, I know you are against him; but, before these people who know me as an infidel--before God who looks down and knows the hearts of men--I want to say that I believe in Job Malden. What I have seen of him in these awful days has changed my whole life. Henceforth I believe in God."