Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/200

190 legitimately be charged upon them. All the immigrants from Australia were classed under the general title of "Sydney Ducks," and were regarded with great suspicion; and many, indeed, and, among them some very respectable people, had been warned away, and obliged to leave California.

When the two men were brought before the magistrate, they gave their names as Thomas Berdue and Joseph Wildred. Berdue, named in the complaint "Stuart, alias Berdue," was a man of about forty years of age, of medium size, with a peculiar sharp face, black piercing eye, and a heavy, bushy black beard. He stated that he had been in the mines; had only arrived in San Francisco a few days before, in company with Wildred, who had been his "chum" in the mining camp; that he knew nothing of the robbery of Jansen, and that he had never been known by the name of "Stuart." At least half a dozen witnesses were called, however, who swore positively to his identity with Stuart; and one of them said in his evidence that he had lived for months with him in the same camp, and knew him well, and that he had always there been known as "Jim Stuart." This evidence, taken in connection with that of Jansen, could leave no doubt in the mind of the examining magistrate, whose plain duty it was to send the men before the city recorder, who, if he should be equally well satisfied of their guilt, would be obliged to commit them for trial.

The recorder was at that hour holding court in the building at the corner of Jackson and Kearny streets, which then served for court-house, police office, and jail. In order to escape the crowd, which was now becoming impatient, the prisoners were taken out by a back way from the magistrate's office, and, being placed in a close carriage, were driven as rapidly as possible by side streets to the court-house. But the excited crowd, which had now swelled in numbers to several thousands, soon learned what had been done, and, moved by one common impulse, surged like sea waves through Kearny street, and reached the court-house just after the two men had been taken into the recorder's court-room.

Law at that time in San Francisco was very doubtful, and unreliable in its operation. Notorious murderers, thieves, robbers, and burglars, it was well known, had, by some corrupt means, succeeded in continually escaping through its meshes, until the people began to feel that the committal of a presumed criminal upon his preliminary examination was equivalent to his final escape. As the excited crowd reached the court-house, and learned that Stuart and Wildred had just been taken in, a rush was made for the door, the railing, inside of which the prisoners sat, trembling like aspen, was broken down, and a dozen pioneers, leading the rest, leaped over toward the prisoner's box, ready to seize and bear out to the populace the two frightened wretches. It so happened that that after-