Page:Gilbert Parker--The Lane that had No Turning.djvu/275

Rh ing the jury, said that he never before had seen a prisoner so frank, so outwardly honest, but he warned them that they must not lose sight of the crime itself, the taking of a human life, whereby a woman was made a widow and a child fatherless. The jury found him guilty.

With few remarks the judge delivered his sentence, and then himself, shaken and pale, left the court-room hurriedly, for Blaze Turgeon’s father had been his friend from boyhood.

Blaze took his sentence calmly, looking the jury squarely in the eyes, and when the judge stopped, he bowed to him, and then turned to the jury and said:

"Gentlemen, you have ruined my life. You don’t know, and I don’t know, who killed the man. You have guessed, and I take the penalty. Suppose I’m innocent—how will you feel when the truth comes out? You’ve known me more or less these twenty years, and you’ve said, with evidently no more knowledge than I’ve got, that I did this horrible thing. I don’t know but that one of you did it. But you are safe, and I take my ten years!"

He turned from them, and, as he did so, he saw a woman looking at him from a corner of the court-room, with a strange, wild expression. At the moment he saw no more than an excited, bewildered face, but afterwards this face came and went before him, flashing in and out of dark places in a kind of mockery.

As he went from the court-room another woman made her way to him in spite of the guards. It was the Little Chemist’s wife, who, years before, had been his father’s housekeeper, who knew him when his eyes first opened on the world.