Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/48

44 indeed, Heaven—infinite both in mercy and in power—raised up as by a miracle some earthly instrument to save him.

The court was one vast sea of eager faces; for, to the spectators, this trial was as a great game of chance, which the counsel for the prosecution, the judge, and the jury, played against the prisoner and his advocate, and at which the prisoner staked his life.

There was but one opinion in that vast assemblage; and that was, that the accused would lose in this dreadful game, and that he well deserved to lose.

There had been betting in Slopperton on the result of this awful hazard. For the theory of chances is to certain minds so delightful, that the range of subjects for a wager may ascend from a maggot-race to a trial for murder. Some adventurous spirits had taken desperate odds against the outsider "Acquittal;" and many enterprising gentlemen had made what they considered "good books," by putting heavy sums on the decided favourite, "Found Guilty." As, however, there might be a commutation of the sentence of death to transportation for life, some speculators had bet upon the chance of the prisoner being found guilty, but not executed; or, as it had been forcibly expressed, had backed "Penal Servitude" against "Gallows."

So there were private interests, as well as a public interest, among that swelling ocean of men and women; and Richard had but very few backers in the great and terrible game that was being played.

In a corner of the gallery of the court, high up over the heads of the multitude, there was a little spot railed off from the public, and accessible only to the officials, or persons introduced by them. Here, among two or three policemen, stood our friend Mr. Joseph Peters, with his mouth very much on one side, and his eyes fixed intently upon the prisoner at the bar. The gallery in which he stood faced the dock, though at a great distance from it.

If there was one man in that vast assembly who, next to the prisoner, was most wretched, that man was the prisoner's counsel. He was young, and this was only his third or fourth brief; and this was, moreover, the first occasion upon which he had ever been intrusted with an important case. He was an intensely nervous and excitable man, and failure would be to him worse than death; and he felt failure inevitable. He had not one inch of ground for the defence; and, in spite of the prisoner's repeated protestations of his innocence, he believed that prisoner to be guilty. He was an earnest man; and this belief damped his earnestness. He was a conscientious man; and