GABRIEL CONROY.[1]
BY BRET HARTE.
CHAPTER XLIX.
THE PEOPLE vs. JOHN DOE alias GABRIEL CONROY, AND JANE ROE alias JULIE CONROY. BEFORE BOOMPOINTER, J.
The day of the trial was one of exacting and absorbing interest to One Horse Gulch. Long before ten o'clock the court-room and even the halls and corridors of the lately rehabilitated court-house were thronged with spectators. It is only fair to say that by this time the main points at issue were forgotten. It was only remembered that some of the first notabilities of the State had come up from Sacramento to attend the trial; that one of the most eminent lawyers in San Francisco had been engaged for the prisoner at a fee variously estimated from fifty to one hundred thousand dollars, and that the celebrated Col. Starbottle, of Siskiyou, was to assist in the prosecution. That a brisk duel of words, and, it was confidently hoped, a later one of pistols, would grow out of this forensic encounter; that certain disclosures affecting men and women of high social standing were to be expected; and finally, that in some mysterious way a great political and sectional principle (Col. Starbottle was from the South and Mr. Poinsett from the North) was to be evolved and upheld during the trial,—these were the absorbing fascinations to One Horse Gulch.
At ten o'clock Gabriel, accompanied by his counsel, entered the court-room, followed by Col. Starbottle. Judge Boompointer, entering at the same moment, bowed distantly to Arthur and familiarly to Col. Starbottle. In his otium, off the bench, he had been chaffed by the District Attorney, and had lost large sums at play with Col. Starbottle. Nevertheless he was a trifle uneasy under the calmly critical eyes of the famous young advocate from San Francisco. Arthur was too wise to exhibit his fastidiousness before the Court; nevertheless, Judge Boompointer was dimly conscious that he would on that occasion have preferred that the Clerk who sat below him had put on a cleaner shirt, and himself refrained from taking off his cravat and collar, as was his judicial habit on the Wingdam circuit. There was some slight prejudice on the part of the panel to this well-dressed young lawyer, which they were pleased to specify and define more particularly as his general "airiness." Seeing which, Justice, on the bench, became more dignified, and gazed severely at the panel and at Arthur.
In the selection of the jury there was some difficulty; it was confidently supposed that the prisoner's counsel would challenge the array on the ground of the recent vigilance excitement, but public opinion was disappointed when the examination by the defense was confined to trivial and apparently purposeless inquiry into the nativity of the several jurors. A majority of those accepted by the defense were men of Southern birth and education. Col. Starbottle, who, as a representative of the peculiar chivalry of the South, had always adopted this plan himself, in cases where his client was accused of assault and battery, or even homicide, could not in respect to his favorite traditions object to it. But when it was found that there were only two men of Northern extraction on the jury, and that not a few of them had been his own clients, Col. Starbottle thought he had penetrated the theory of the defense.
I regret that Col. Starbottle's effort, admirably characterized by the "Banner" as "one of the most scathing and Junius-like gems of legal rhetoric ever known to the Californian bar," has not been handed down to me in extenso. Substantially, however, it appeared that Col. Starbottle had never before found himself in "so peculiar, so momentous, so—er—delicate a position. A position, sir, er—er—gentlemen, fraught with the deepest social, professional—er—er—he should not hesitate to say, upon his own personal responsibility, a position of the deepest political significance! Col. Starbottle was aware that this statement might be deprecated—nay, even assailed by some. But he did not retract that statement. Certainly not in the presence of that jury, in whose intelligent faces he saw—er—er—er—justice—inflexible justice!—er—er—mingled and—er—mixed with—with chivalrous instinct, and suffused with the characteristic—er—er—glow of—er—er—" (I regret to
- ↑ Copyright, 1875, by American Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
