An Obstinate Juror.

Evening Post, Volume XLVIII, Issue 131, 1 December 1894, Page 1 (Supplement)

An Obstinate Juror.

The jury had retired for consultation prior to bringing in the verdict of "Guilty' which was expeoted of them. Retiring at all seemed little more than a farce, for from tho beginning to the end of the case the evidence had gone bo steadily against the — defendant that by the time the last witness "'■»v > had beon called there was no manner of doubt in the public mind that Robert Sullivan ' had deuborately, and in cold blood, murdered Jack Wilder, and it needed not ho vigorous speech of the prosecuting atruey to convince anyone to that effect. Tho evidonce, being briefly summed up, ran us follows ; Robert, or, as he was more familiarly called, Bob Sullivan, while in a btato of intoxication quarrelled with, and lost his last centto Jack Wilder, a professional sharper. Awaking the morning after his debauch to find himself beggared, ho had sworn, in the presence of several witnesses, to get his money back or kill the man who had outwitted him. Accordingly he had set out to meet Wilder on his return from a neighbouring town, and the next day the body of tho latter was found in a lonely stretch of the road with a knife in his heart. Sullivan had been obliged to udmit that he had met his enemy near this spot, they had a stormy interview, but maintained ttiut they had parted without blows, aa Wilder promised him to restore hia money. There was no tittle of circumstantial evidence wanting to confirm the appearance of Sullivan's <fuUt, and even the attorney for the defence was privately convinced of the falsity and absurdity of his client's plea of " Not Guilty." The judge, a largo, pompons man, having instructed the jury in his most severe and autocratic manner, busied himself with some papers, and did not deign a glance to the assembly below. It was, as could readily be observed, a gathering of small tradesmen and farmers. Here aud there the keen faoe of a lawyer oi that of a stranger from the neighbouring city stood boldly from the sea of honest vacuity that surrounded it. 'I ho prisoner sat with his face buried in his bunds, which had lost their former tan, and were pale and trembling. Near him sat. his wife, hugging a sickly babe to her breast, and showing in her wild eyes, twitching mouth, and every lino of her mo>igi'e ; stooping figure, the terror which held her in its grusp. A breathless silence was upon that audionce in the country court -room : even the baby had ceased its fretful wailing, and the buzz of a bluebottle fly, entangled in a spider's web in the window, was the only sound that broke the stillness. Five minutes passed, ten, twenty, and still the jury did not come. A murmur of impatience begun to be heard, and presently the judge beckoned tho sheriff to him and whispered a fow words in hid ear, and the people saw him depart through the same door whioh had, apparently, swallowed up tho jurors. The sheriff mudohis wayalong eovtial gloomy passages into a lurge, light room, where he inquired of the foreman if they were not yet agreed. •'No, we ain't," gruffly responded that functionary. '« There's eleven of us for huugin', but Conway there won't hear to it, he wunts to clear that fellarout an' out, an' uayri he'll stay with us till kingdom come afore he'll budgo an inch." Giles Conway, the man whoso obstinacy was cuutiug much unnecessary delay, was seated rather apart from the rest, and wore brown jeans nnd asofthat, which marked him a fanner. Even had not the absence of any attempt at foppishness proclaimed his cast there was something about him whioh insensibly connected itself in the observer's mind with the free winds and untrammelled suutihine of the country. He was much the saute colour from his head to his feet, for eyi'if, skin, hair aud beard were alike brown, and only the doep lines on his firm, equarelycut fuce, showed that he was no longer youug. Ju<-t at present he seemed in no wise disconcerted by the wrathful impatience of his associates, but pushing his felt hat further back on hiß head and settling himself more comfortable in his wooden chair, said slowly : "No, friends, you won't ever get me to hand over a man to the gallows on suoh evidence as that, an' there ain't no special use of cussiu' about it for it won't do a bit o' good." " Oh, but that's such foolishness !" broke in one of the group. "Here's all this evidence that no man in his senses could doubt, agoin' to prove that Bob Sullivan killed Jaok Wilder, and here you sit like a bump on a log, an' won't listen to none of it." "That's just it," replied Conway, "you all seem to think that evidence like that orter hang a man, but if you'd seen as much of that sort of thing as I have you'd think different. I ain't much of a talker, but, maybe, you wouldn't mind, listenin' to a case of this kind I happen to know about, an', maybe, "by the time I'm done— an' it won't take long to tell it — you'll see why I dou't want to hang a young fellow I've known nearly all my life, for boinetbin' that very likely he didn't do." •'You all know how, when I wasn't much over twenty, I went West, an' put all tliu money I could rake an' scrape into a much tiu' cuttlo. Well, the pluce next to mme wusowned by a j onng feliar— we'll call hi v Jim Suunders, although that isn't his jumo — who'd como out, like me, to make bit fortuue. We took to each other from thu iir.it, an' pretty coon we were moro liko brothers tliun v good many moie of the leal a i lido I've keen bince. After a while Jim told me he was going to get married, an' a few- wet kb Idler he bi ought home the prettiest littio thing you'd see in a day's ride. She bud lota of yellow hair that was always tumblin' down on her shoulders, an' big blue eyes, an' a voice like a bird, an' Jimwell, he thought there wasn't nobody like Milly iv all the country. " She seemed fond of him, too, at first, but it wasn't long before I could see that it was ft clear case of misfit all round. There whs lots of excuse for her, for of course it was a hard life, on' ahe loved finery and pretty things, an* Jim didn't have the money to give them to her, though he worked early and late, an' did his level best to mako some thin' more than a livin'. "Maybe it would Save turned out all right in time if it hadn't been that one day Jim went to the nearest town to buy some furmin' implements, and fell in there with a fellow he used to know back East, and nothin' would do but ho must go home with Jim to see how he was fixed. Well, he come, an' it was a black day for Jim when he set foot on the threshold, for the moment he saw Milly he hadn't eyes for nothin' else, an' she bein' a woman was mighty set up to think a city man would set suoh stores by her. " He made himself so pleasant an' so much at homo that they begged him to stay all night, au' long about twelve o'clock he was, or pretended to be, took awful sick. They worked with him till he got better, and wouldn't hear of his tryin' to go away next mornin' ; so he stayed on, sittin' on the big rockin' chair with a pillow behind him an' talkin' to Milly while Jim was off at work. He didn't seem in no particular hurry about go in', but Jim never 'spicioned for a minute that anything was wrong, for he liked the fellow first-rate, an' wouldn't no more have thought of doubtin' Milly than he would tb» Lord that made him. " One evenin' he came in late, tired and hungry, an' form' that his wife — his wife that he loved— had left him and gone away with that devil he thought was his friend ! "He went wild for awhile. It seemed to him that everything was blaok around him, an' there was great spotohei of blood before his eyea, an' he could hear voices that kept alaughin' at him an' callin' him a fool, An' the only thing he held fast to was that he must follow 'em to the world's end an' kill tho man that had took away all he had. Bo he traoked 'em, now here, now there, but they always doubled on him, till at las', when hia money was gone, he lost 'em altogether. "Thbnbo came to himself a little, an' sold his ranch, an' went baok to bis old home to wait— for he kuowed somehow, that one day sooner or later th"o Lord would give him hia revenge, he worked while he waited, an' made monejr an' got well off, and nobody knew nothin' 'bout his ever bein' married, so he had something like peace. But he never forgot, an' after awhile it seemed like he didn't feel so hard towards Milly, for he remembered how young sho was, an' bow foolish, an* what a devil she had to deal with ; an' sometimes he could see her with the pretty colour all j gone from her cheeks, an' the laugh from her voice, heart-broken and deserted. " At last, twenty years afterwards when | he w«8 gettin' on in life, his time came, j He was ridiu' along, not thinkin' about j anything in particular, when ho happened : to look up, an 1 there comin' roun' a bend in the road an' ridin' a black horse was the man he'd been looking for all these years. They knowed eaoh other tho minute their eyes met, an 1 the fellow got white as chalk an' pulled his horse clean bask on its haunches tryin' to turn 'round' an' make a run for it, but it wasn't no good for Jim was off his horse in a minute an' had him by the throat, an' in less time than it takes to tell it, had pulled him down, oursin' an' euttin' at him, to the ground. Then holdin' him there, with his knee on his breaat, an' his knife at his throat, he says : " ' Where's Milly f Tell me or I'll cut your devilish heart out ! ' "The fellow glared back at him like a rat in a trap an' knowin' 't was no use to lie, says ; "She's dead; she got sick after we got to New York, an' I left her an' she died in " 'I'd orter kill you liko a snake, but lv« always lived equaro, an* the Lord Jielpiu' me I'll die that way, bo I'll give jou an even chance. Get out your knife iin' fight, an' remember that one of us has got to die right here.' "Then he lot. him up, and they wont at st. They was pretty evenly matched to 2ook at 'em, but Jim thought of Milly dyin'

all alone, an' fought like a tiger, an' pretty soon he left the n.an that had come between 'em stiff an' stark with a knife iv hm hmrt, an' his white faoe a-glarin' up at the wky. " Then cornea in the part of the s'ory that I want you all to take for a warnin', before you'll be so quick as find a man guilty on nothin' but circumstantial evidence. When the body was found nobody evtr thought of 'spiciouin' Jim but everything pointed to another man that done the kiJlin.' He'd sworn to kill the dead man; he was on the.huut for him when last scon, an' he could'nt prove no alibi. So they arrested him, an' the first Jim heard of it he was summonsed on the jury to try him. Jim had never thought of giving himself up for a murder, for he knowed he'd fought and killed his enemy fair an' square, an' he was glad he done it. He didn't see that it was any business of the law's to interfere between 'em, and he didn't like to drag in Milly's narao before tne judge an' jury an' all the people who wouldn't remember, like he did, when she was young an' innocent. Even when he was summoned he didn't have any notion but he would be cleared when they'd looked into things some, an' he made up his mind to say nothin' if he could help it. " But when he got there everything was so dead against the prisoner that if he hadn't knowed he'd done the killin* himself, he'd a- thought cure he was guilty. He got kind of dazed at last, an' didn't seem to know nothin' till he found himself in a room with the rest of the jury, an' all eleven of 'em wanting to hang the man that he knowed was innocent. Then he came to his senses and voted agaiust 'em, an' when they asked him for his reasons he told 'em the story I've been telliu' you." Giles Conway stopped and gazed steadily into the audience, who had gathered around him till they hemmed him in on every Aide. "An' what did they do with him?" asked the foreman at last. " I don't know," he answered slowly. " It ain't decided yet, for Jack Wilder was the man that ran off with Milly, an' it was me that killed him."