Chapter 5

"I suppose you realize that the rest of us are pretty rapidly forming a conclusion on this matter," said the foreman.

"Come! come!" said Mr. Eldridge; "don't be quite so hard on him, Captain. Now, Mr. Smith," he said, standing up with his hands in his coat-pockets, and looking at Eli, "we know that there often is crooked sticks on juries, that hold out alone--that's to be expected; but they always argue, and stand to it the rest are fools, and all that. Now, all is, we don't see why you don't sort of argue, if you've got reasons satisfactory to you. Come, now," he added, walking up to Eli, and resting one foot on the seat of his chair, "why don't you tell it over? and if we're wrong, I'm ready to join you."

Eli looked up at him.

"Didn't you ever know," he said, "of a man's takin' a cat off, to lose, that his little girl didn't want drownded, and leavin' him ashore, twenty or thirty miles, bee-line, from home, and that cat's bein' back again the next day, purrin' 'round 's if nothin' had happened?"

"Yes," said Mr. Eldridge--"knew of just such a case."

"Very well," said Eli; "how does he find his way home?"

"Don't know," said Mr. Eldridge; "always has been a standing mystery to me."

"Well," said Eli, "mark my words. There's such a thing as arguin', and there's such a thing as knowin' outright; and when you'll tell me how that cat inquires his way home, I'll tell you how I know John Wood ain't guilty."

This made a certain sensation, and Eli's stock went up.

An old, withered man rapped on the table.

"That's so!" he said; "and there's other sing'lar things! How is it that a sea-farin' man, that's dyin' to home, will allers die on the ebb-tide? It never fails, but how does it happen? Tell me that! And there's more ways than one of knowin' things, too!"

"I know that man ain't guilty," said Eli.

"Hark ye!" said a dark old man with a troubled face, rising and pointing his finger toward Eli. "_Know_, you say? I _knew_, wunst. I _knew_ that my girl, my only child, was good. One night she went off with a married man that worked in my store, and stole my money--and where is she now?" And then he added, "What I _know_ is, that every man hes his price. I hev mine, and you hev yourn!"

The impugnment of Eli's motives was evident to all.

"'Xcuse me, Mr. Speaker," said George Washington, rising with his hand in his bosom; "as de question is befo' us, I wish to say that de las' bro' mus' have spoken under 'xcitement. Every man _don'_ have his price! An' I hope de bro' will recant--like as de Psalmist goes out o' his way to say '_In my haste_ I said, All men are liars.' He was a very busy man, de Psalmist--writin' down hymns all day, sharpen'n' his lead-pencil, bossin' 'roun' de choir--callin' Selah! Well, bro'n an' sisters"--both arms going out, and his voice going up--"one day, seems like, he was in gre't haste--got to finish a psalm for a monthly concert, or such--and some man incorrupted him, and lied; and bein' in gre't haste--and a little old Adam in him--he says, right off, quick: '_All_ men are liars!' But see--when he gets a little time to set back and meditate, he says: 'Dis won' do--dere's Moses, an' Job, an' Paul--dey ain't liars!' An' den he don' sneak out, and 'low he said, 'All men is lions,' or such. No! de Psalmist ain't no such man; but he owns up, an' 'xplains: '_In my haste_,' he says, 'I said it.'"

The foreman rose and rapped.

"I await a motion," said he, "if our friend will allow me the privilege of speaking."

Mr. Washington calmly bowed.

Then the foreman, when nobody seemed disposed to move, speaking slowly, at first, and piece-meal, alternating language with smoke, gradually edged into the current of the evidence, and ended by going all over it again, with fresh force and point. His cigar glowed and chilled in the darkening room as he talked.

"Now," he said, when he had drawn all the threads together to the point of guilt, "what are we going to do upon this evidence?"

"I'll tell you something," said Eli. "I didn't want to say it because I know what you'll all think, but I'll tell you, all the same."

"Ah!" said the foreman.

Eli stood up and faced the others.

"'Most all o' you know what our Bar is in a south-east gale. They ain't a man here that 'uld dare to try and cross it when the sea's breakin' on it. The man that says he would, lies!" And he looked at the foreman, and waited a moment.

"When my wife took sick, and I stopped goin' to sea, two year ago, and took up boat-fishin', I didn't know half as much about the coast as the young boys do, and one afternoon it was blowin' a gale, and we was all hands comin' in, and passin' along the Bar to go sheer 'round it to the west'ard, and Captain Fred Cook--he's short-sighted--got on to the Bar before he knew it, and then he had to go ahead, whether or no; and I was right after him, and I s'posed he knew, and I followed him. Well, he was floated over, as luck was, all right; but when I'd just got on the Bar, a roller dropped back and let my bowsprit down into the sand, and then come up quicker'n lightnin' and shouldered the boat over, t'other end first, and slung me into the water; and when I come up, I see somethin' black, and there was John Wood's boat runnin' by me before the wind with a rush--and 'fore I knew an'thing he had me by the hair by one hand and in his boat, and we was over the Bar. Now, I tell you, a man that looks the way I saw him look when I come over the gunwale, face up, don't go 'round breakin' in and hookin' things. He hadn't one chance in five, and he was a married man, too, with small children. And what's more," he added, incautiously, "he didn't stop there. When he found out, this last spring, that I was goin' to lose my place, he lent me money enough to pay the interest that was overdue on the mortgage, of his own acord."

And he stopped suddenly.

"You have certainly explained yourself," said the foreman. "I think we understand you distinctly."

"There isn't one word of truth in that idea," said Eli, flushing up, "and you know it. I've paid him back every cent. I know him better'n any of you, that's all, and when I know he ain't guilty, I won't say he is; and I can set here as long as any other man."

"Lively times some folks'll hev, when they go home," said a spare tin-peddler, stroking his long yellow goatee. "Go into the store: nobody speak to you; go to cattle-show: everybody follow you 'round; go to the wharf: nobody weigh your fish; go to buy seed-cakes at the cart: baker won't give no tick."

"How much does it cost, Mr. Foreman," said the butcher, "for a man 't's obliged to leave town, to move a family out West? I only ask for information. I have known a case where a man had to leave--couldn't live there no longer--wa'n't wanted."

There was a knock. An officer, sent by the judge, inquired whether the jury were likely soon to agree.

"It rests with you, sir," said the foreman, looking at Eli.

But Eli sat doggedly with his hands in his pockets, and did not look up or speak.

"Say to the judge that I cannot tell," said the foreman.

It was eight o'clock when the officer returned, with orders to take the jury across the street to the hotel, to supper. They went out in pairs, except that the juryman who was left to fall in with Eli made three with the file ahead, and left Eli to walk alone. This was noticed by the by standers. At the hotel, Eli could not eat a mouthful. He was seated at one end of the table, and was left entirely out of the conversation. When the jury were escorted back to the court house, rumors had evidently begun to arise from his having walked alone, for there was quite a little crowd at the hotel-door, to see them. They went as before: four pairs, a file of three, and Eli alone. Then the spectators understood it.

* * * * *

When the jury were locked into their room again for the night, Mr. Eldridge sat down by Eli, and lit his pipe.

"I understand," he said, "just how you feel. Now, between you and me, there was a good-hearted fellow that kept me out of a bad mess once. I've never told anybody just what it was, and I don't mean to tell you now, but it brought my blood up standing, to find how near I'd come to putting a fine steamer and two hundred and forty passengers under water. Well, one day, a year or so after that, this man had a chance to get a good ship, only there was some talk against him, that he drank a little. Well, the owners told him they wanted to see me, and he come to me, and says he, 'Mr. Eldridge, I hope you'll speak a good word for me; if you do, I'll get the ship, but if they refuse me this one, I'm dished everywhere.' Well, the owners put me the square question, and I had to tell 'em. Well, I met him that afternoon on Sacramento Street, as white as a sheet, and he wouldn't speak to me, but passed right by, and that night he went and shipped before the mast. That's the last I ever heard of him. But I had to do it.

"Now," he added, "this man's been good to you; but the case is proved, and you ought to vote with the rest of us."

"It ain't proved," said Eli. "The judge said that if any man had a reasonable doubt, he ought to hold out. Now, I ain't convinced."

"Well, that's easy said," replied Mr. Eldridge, a little hotly, and he arose, and left him.

The jurymen broke up into little knots, tilted their chairs back, and settled into the easiest positions that their cramped quarters allowed. Most of them lit their pipes; the captain, and one or two whom he honored, smoked fragrant cigars, and the room was soon filled with a dense cloud.

Eli sat alone by the window.

"Sometimes sell two at one house," said a lank book-agent, arousing himself from a reverie; "once sold three."

"I think the Early Rose is about as profitable as any," said a little farmer, with a large circular beard. "I used to favor Jacobs's Seedling, but they haven't done so well with me of late years."

"Sometimes," said the book-agent, picking his teeth with a quill, "you'll go to a house, and they'll say they can't be induced to buy a book of any kind, historical, fictitious, or religious; but you just keep on talking, and show the pictures--'Grant in Boyhood,' 'Grant a Tanner,' 'Grant at Head-quarters,' 'Grant in the White House,' 'Grant before Queen Victoria,' and they warm up, I tell you, and not infrequently buy."

"Do you sell de 'Illustrated Bible,'" asked Washington, "wid de Hypocrypha?"

"No; I have a more popular treatise--the 'Illustrated History of the Bible.' Greater variety. Brings in the surrounding nations, in costume. Cloth, three dollars; sheep, three-fifty; half calf, five-seventy-five, full morocco, gilt edges, seven-fifty. Six hundred and seven illustrations on wood and steel. Three different engravings of Abraham alone. Four of Noah--'Noah before the Flood,' 'Noah Building the Ark,' 'Noah Welcoming the Dove,' 'Noah on Ararat.' Steel engraving of Ezekiel's Wheel, explaining prophecy. Jonah under the gourd, Nineveh in the distance."

Mr. Eldridge and Captain Thomas had drifted into a discussion of harbors, and the captain had drawn his chair up to the table, and, with a cigar in his mouth, was explaining an ingeniously constructed foreign harbor. He was making a rough sketch, with a pen.

"Here is north," he said; "here is the coast-line; here are the flats; here are the sluice-gates; they store the water here, in----"

Some of the younger men had their heads together, in a corner, about the tin-peddler, who was telling stories of people he had met in his journeys, which brought out repeated bursts of laughter.

In the corner farthest from Eli, a delicate-looking man began to tell the butcher about Eli's wife.

"Twelve years ago this fall," he said, "I taught district-school in the parish where she lived. She was about fourteen then. Her father was a poor farmer, without any faculty. Her mother was dead, and she kept house. I stayed there one week, boarding 'round."

"Prob'ly didn't git not much of any fresh meat that week," suggested the butcher.

"She never said much, but it used to divert me to see her order around her big brothers, just as if she was their mother. She and I got to be great friends; but she was a queer piece. One day at school, the girls in her row were communicating, and annoying me, while the third class was reciting in 'First Steps in Numbers,' and I was so incensed that I called Lizzie--that's her name--right out, and had her stand up for twenty minutes. She was a shy little thing, and set great store by perfect marks. I saw that she was troubled a good deal, to have all of them looking and laughing at her. But she stood there, with her hands folded behind her, and not a smile or a word."

"Look out for a sullen cow," said the butcher.

"I felt afraid I had been too hasty with her, and I was rather sorry I had been so decided--although, to be sure, she didn't pretend to deny that she had been communicating."

"Of course," said the butcher: "no use lyin' when you're caught in the act."

"Well, after school, she stayed at her desk, fixing her dinner-pail, and putting her books in a strap, and all that, till all the rest had gone, and then she came up to my desk, where I was correcting compositions."

"Now for music!" said the butcher.

"She had been crying a little. Well, she looked straight in my face, and said she, 'Mr. Pollard, I just wanted to say to you that I wasn't doing anything at all when you called me up;' and off she went. Now, that was just like her--too proud to say a word before the school."

But here his listener's attention was diverted by the voice of the book-agent:

"The very best Bible for teachers, of course, is the limp-cover, protected edges, full Levant morocco, Oxford, silk-sewed, kid-lined, Bishop's Divinity Circuit, with concordance, maps of the Holy Land, weights, measures, and money-tables of the Jews. Nothing like having a really----"

"And so," said the captain, moving back his chair, "they let on the whole head of water, and scour out the channel to a T."

And then he rapped upon the table.

"Gentlemen," he said, "please draw your chairs up, and let us take another ballot."

The count resulted as before. The foreman muttered something which had a scriptural sound.

In a few moments, he drew Mr. Eldridge and two others aside. "Gentlemen," he said to them, "I shall quietly divide the jury into watches, under your charge: ten can sleep, while one wakes to keep Mr. Smith discussing the question. I don't propose to have the night wasted."

And, by one man or another, Eli was kept awake.

* * * * *

"I don't see," said the book-agent, "why you should feel obliged to stick it out any longer. Of course, you are under obligations. But you've done more than enough already, so as that he can't complain of you, and if you give in now, everybody'll give you credit for trying to save your friend, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, for giving in to the evidence. So you'll get credit both ways."

An hour later, the tin-peddler came on duty. He had not followed closely the story about John Wood's loan, and had got it a little awry.

"Now, how foolish you be," he said, in a confidential tone. "Can't you see that if you cave in now, after stan'in' out nine hours"--and he looked at a silver watch with a brass chain, and stroked his goatee--"nine hours and twenty-seven minutes--that you've made jest rumpus enough so as't he won't dare to foreclose on you, for fear they'll say you went back on a trade. On t'other hand, if you hold clear out, he'll turn you out-o'-doors to-morrow, for a blind, so 's to look as if there wa'n't no trade between you. Once he gits off, he won't know Joseph, you bet! That's what I'd do," he added, with a sly laugh. "Take your uncle's advice."

"The only trouble with that," said Eli, shortly, "is that I don't owe him anything."

"Oh," said the peddler; "that makes a difference. I understood you did."

Three o'clock came, and brought Mr. Eldridge. He found Eli worn out with excitement.

"Now I don't judge you the way the others do," said Mr. Eldridge, in a low tone, with his hand on Eli's knee. "I know, as I told you, just the way you feel. But we can't help such things. Suppose, now, that I had kept dark, and allowed to the owners that that man was always sober, and I had heard, six months after, of thirty or forty men going to the bottom because the captain was a little off his base; and then to think of their wives and children at home. We have to do some hard things; but I say, do the square thing, and let her slide."

"But I can't believe he's guilty," said Eli.

"But don't you allow," said Mr. Eldridge, "that eleven men are more sure to hit it right than one man?"

"Yes," said Eli, reluctantly, "as a general thing."

"Well, there's always got to be some give to a jury, just as in everything else, and you ought to lay right down on the rest of us. It isn't as if we were at all squirmish. Now, you know that if you hold out, he'll be tried again."

"Yes, I suppose so."

"Got to be--no other way," said Mr Eldridge. "Now, the next time, there won't be anybody like you to stand out, and the judge'll know of this scrape, and he'll just sock it to him."

Eli turned uneasily in his chair.

"And then it won't be understood in your place, and folks'll turn against you every way, and, what's worse, let you alone."

"I can stand it," said Eli, angrily. "Let 'em do as they like. They can't kill me."

"They can kill your wife and break down your children," said Mr. Eldridge. "Women and children can't stand it. Now there's that man they were speaking of; he lived down my way. He sued a poor, shiftless fellow that had come from Pennsylvania to his daughter's funeral, and had him arrested and taken off, crying, just before the funeral begun--after they'd even set the flowers on the coffin; and nobody'd speak to him after that--they just let him alone; and after a while his wife took sick of it--she was a nice, kindly woman--and she had sort of hysterics, and, finally, he moved off West. And 'twasn't long before the woman died. Now, you can't undertake to do different from everybody else."

"Well," said Eli; "I know I wish it was done with."

Mr. Eldridge stretched his arms and yawned. Then he began to walk up and down, and hum, out of tune. Then he stopped at Captain Thomas's chair.

"Suppose we try a ballot," he said. "He seems to give a little."

In a moment the foreman rapped.

"It is time we were taking another ballot, gentlemen," he said.

The sleepers rose, grumbling, from uneasy dreams.

"I will write 'guilty' on twelve ballots," said the foreman, "and if any one desires to write in 'not,' of course he can."

When the hat came to Eli, he took one of the ballots and held it in his hand a moment; and then he laid it on the table. There was a general murmur. The picture which Mr. Eldridge had drawn loomed up before him. But with a hasty hand he wrote in "not," dropped in the ballot, and going back to his chair by the window, sat down.

There was a cold wave of silence.

Then Eli suddenly walked up to the foreman and faced him.

"Now," he said, "we'll stop. The very next turn breaks ground. If you, or any other man that you set on, tries to talk to me when I don't want to hear, to worry me to death--look out!"

How the long hours wore on! How easy, sometimes, to resist an open pressure, and how hard, with the resistance gone, to fight, as one that beats the air! How the prospect of a whole hostile town loomed up, in a mirage, before Eli! And then the picture rose before him of a long, stately bark, now building, whose owner had asked him yesterday to be first mate. And if his wife were only well, and he were only free from this night's trouble, how soon, upon the long, green waves, he could begin to redeem his little home!

And then came Mr. Eldridge, kind and friendly, to have another little chat.

* * * * *

Morning came, cold and drizzly. An officer knocked at the door, and called out, "Breakfast." And, in a moment, unwashed, and all uncombed, except the tin-peddler, who always carried a beard-comb in his pocket, they were marched across the street to the hotel.

There were a number of men on the piazza waiting to see them--jurymen, witnesses, and the accused himself, for he was on bail. He had seen the procession the night before, and, like the others, had read its meaning.

"Eli knows I wouldn't do it," he had said to himself, "and he's going to hang out, sure."

The jury began to turn from the court-house door. Everybody looked. A file of two men, another file, another, another; would there come three men, and then one? No; Eli no longer walked alone.

Everybody looked at Wood; he turned sharply away.

But this time the order of march in fact showed nothing, one way or the other. It only meant that the judge, who had happened to see the jury the night before returning from their supper, had sent for the high sheriff in some temper--for judges are human--and had vigorously intimated that if that statesman did not look after his fool of a deputy, who let a jury parade secrets to the public view, he would----!

* * * * *

The jury were in their room again. At nine o'clock came a rap, and a summons from the court.

The prosecuting attorney was speaking with the judge when they went in. In a moment he took his seat.

"John Wood!" called out the clerk, and the defendant arose. His attorney was not there.

"Mr. Foreman!" said the judge, rising. The jury arose. The silence of the crowded court-room was intense.

"Before the clerk asks you for a verdict, gentlemen," said the judge, "I have something of the first importance to say to you, which has but this moment come to my knowledge."

Eli changed color, and the whole court-room looked at him.

"There were some most singular rumors, after the case was given to you, gentlemen, to the effect that there had been in this cause a criminal abuse of justice. It is painful to suspect, and shocking to know, that courts and juries are liable ever to suffer by such unprincipled practices. After ten years upon the bench, I never witness a conviction of crime without pain; but that pain is light, compared with the distress of knowing of a wilful perversion of justice. It is a relief to me to be able to say to you that such instances are, in my judgment, exceedingly rare, and--so keen is the awful searching power of truth--are almost invariably discovered."

The foreman touched his neighbor with his elbow. Eli folded his arms.

"As I said," continued the judge, "there were most singular rumors. During the evening and the night, rumor, as is often the case, led to evidence, and evidence has led to confession and to certainty. And the district attorney now desires me to say to you that the chief officer of the bank--who held the second key to the safe--is now under arrest for a heavy defalcation, which a sham robbery was to conceal, and that you may find the prisoner at the bar--not guilty. I congratulate you, gentlemen, that you had not rendered an adverse verdict."

"Your Honor!" said Eli; and he cleared his throat; "I desire it to be known that, even as the case stood last night, this jury had not agreed to convict, and never would have!"

There was a hush, while a loud scratching pen indorsed the record of acquittal. Then Wood walked down to the jury-box and took Eli's hand.

"Just what I told my wife all through," he said. "I knew you'd hang out!"

* * * * *