The President—“Third reading of the
bill!”
The two friends shook in their shoes. Senators
threw down their extras and snatched a word or two
with each other in whispers. Then the gavel rapped
to command silence while the names were called on the
ayes and nays. Washington grew paler and paler,
weaker and weaker while the lagging list progressed;
and when it was finished, his head fell helplessly
forward on his arms. The fight was fought, the
long struggle was over, and he was a pauper.
Not a man had voted for the bill!
Col. Sellers was bewildered and well nigh paralyzed,
himself. But no man could long consider his own
troubles in the presence of such suffering as Washington’s.
He got him up and supported him—almost
carried him indeed—out of the building
and into a carriage. All the way home Washington
lay with his face against the Colonel’s shoulder
and merely groaned and wept. The Colonel tried
as well as he could under the dreary circumstances
to hearten him a little, but it was of no use.
Washington was past all hope of cheer, now.
He only said:
“Oh, it is all over—it is all over
for good, Colonel. We must beg our bread, now.
We never can get up again. It was our last chance,
and it is gone. They will hang Laura!
My God they will hang her! Nothing can save
the poor girl now. Oh, I wish with all my soul
they would hang me instead!”
Arrived at home, Washington fell into a chair and
buried his face in his hands and gave full way to
his misery. The Colonel did not know where to
turn nor what to do. The servant maid knocked
at the door and passed in a telegram, saying it had
come while they were gone.
The Colonel tore it open and read with the voice of
a man-of-war’s broadside:
“Verdict of jury, not guilty
and Laura is free!”
The court room was packed on the morning on which
the verdict of the jury was expected, as it had been
every day of the trial, and by the same spectators,
who had followed its progress with such intense interest.
There is a delicious moment of excitement which the
frequenter of trials well knows, and which he would
not miss for the world. It is that instant when
the foreman of the jury stands up to give the verdict,
and before he has opened his fateful lips.
The court assembled and waited. It was an obstinate
jury.
It even had another question—this intelligent
jury—to ask the judge this morning.
The question was this: “Were the doctors
clear that the deceased had no disease which might
soon have carried him off, if he had not been shot?”
There was evidently one jury man who didn’t want
to waste life, and was willing to stake a general
average, as the jury always does in a civil case,
deciding not according to the evidence but reaching
the verdict by some occult mental process.
