218 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 
out from the evidence. His own lawyers were cowed, and 
the pale and frightened wretch listened with ghastly face, 
chattering teeth, and trembling hands to the Judge’s charge 
to the jury, which sounded in its solemn tones and terrible 
denunciations much more like a sentence of death than a 
charge—when, as he was apparently about winding up with 
positive instructions to the jury to find the prisoner guilty— 
there was the sound of carriage wheels outside, and then a 
sudden commotion in the court. 
In a moment the Sheriff stepped forward and placed a slip 
of paper in the hands of the Judge, who had paused at the 
first sound, and now read the paper calmly over twice; then 
deliberately throwing back his spectacles, he nodded assent 
to the Sheriff, who, with a sort of half smile upon his face, 
made his way out of the court room, and in a moment re- 
turned, pushing through the crowd, bearing in his arms the 
attenuated form of the missing boy, William Smith! 
Such a thrill and murmur as ran through that court room, 
—the old miser, who had at first sprung to his feet, con- 
vulsively dropped, swooning, into his seat, for the child had 
been artfully draped in white, and looked as if it might have 
just come from the grave, and the hoary-headed villain really 
did not know whether it was dead or alive,—for Mattie! ten- 
der, timid, gentle Mattie!—had kept her little companion’s 
counsel, as she had promised, in spite of all the threats of her 
father, and all the terrors of a public trial. Indeed, poor 
child, she did not know herself whether he was alive, and had 
been almost crying her life away because, in her innocence, 
she supposed ,the neighbors who had presented her father 
must of course have known the fact of his murder before they 
did it—he was in truth dead to her! 
The scene that follows baffles description. Old Saunders 
was borne from the court room in convulsjons, and shriek was 
heard following shriek from him until the doors of the jail 
closed upon him. The Judge then ran rapidly over the facts 
