The short winter afternoon was closing in. For half an hour shadows had been stealing wearily through the room; the spectators had become a blurred mass, the jurymen lounging in the box had grown indistinct in the gloom. For some time, the green shade of the electric lamp on the clerk’s desk had been glowing, but now, as Broadwell came forward, the old bailiff, shuffling across the floor, suddenly switched on the electricity, and group by group, cluster by cluster, the bulbs sprang into light, first in the ceiling, then on the walls, then about the judge’s bench. There was a touch of the theatrical in it, for the lights seemed to have been switched on to illuminate the entrance of this important man. He was sworn and took the witness-chair, which he completely filled, and clasped his white hands across his round paunch with an air that savored of piety and unction. The few gray hairs glistening at the sides of his round bald head gave it a tonsured appearance; fat enfolded his skull, rounding at his temples, swelling on his clean-shaven, monkish cheeks, falling in folds like dewlaps over his linen collar. He sat there with satisfaction, breathing heavily, making no movement, excepting as to his thin lips which he pursed now and then as if to adjust them more and more perfectly to what he considered the proper expression of impeccability. Marriott was utterly sick at heart. For he knew William A. Broadwell, orthodox, formal, eminently respectable, a server on committees, a deacon with certain cheap honors of the churchly kind, a Pharisee of the Pharisees. In his low solemn voice, pursing his lips nicely after each sentence as if his own words tasted good to him, Broadwell answered Eades’s questions; he had no opposition to capital punishment, indeed, he added quite gratuitously, he believed in supporting it; he had great veneration for the law, and--oh, yes, he had read accounts of the murder; read them merely because he esteemed it a citizen’s duty to be conversant with affairs of the day, and he had formed opinions as any intelligent man must necessarily. "But you could lay aside those opinions and reach a conclusion based purely on evidence, of course, Mr. Broadwell?" "Oh, yes, sir," said Broadwell, with an unctuous smile that deprecated the idea of his being influenced in any but the legitimate way. "We are thoroughly satisfied with Mr. Broadwell, your Honor," said Eades. "One minute, Mr. Broadwell," began Marriott. Glassford looked at Marriott the surprise he felt at his presumption, and Marriott felt an opposition in the room. Broadwell shifted slightly, pursed his lips smugly and looked down on Marriott with his wise benevolence. "Mr. Broadwell, you say you read the accounts of the tragedy?" "Yes." "Did you read all of them?" "I believe so." "Read the report of the evidence given on the preliminary hearing?" "Yes." "Read the editorials in the _Courier_?" "Yes." "You respect its opinions?" "I do, yes."