XII
Archie was looking well that Monday morning in January on which his trial was to begin. He had slept soundly in his canvas hammock; not even the whimpering of Reinhart, the young sneak thief whom every one in the jail detested, nor the strange noises and startled outcries he made in his sleep–when he did sleep–had disturbed him. The night before, Utter had allowed Archie a bath, though he had broken a rule in doing so, and that morning Archie had borrowed a whisk from Utter, brushed his old clothes industriously, and then he had put on the underwear his mother had washed and patched and mended, and the shirt of blue and white stripes Marriott had provided. Then with scrupulous care he set his cell in order, arranged his few things on the little table–the deck of cards, the yellow-covered dog's-eared novel and a broken comb. Beside these, lay his fresh collar and his beloved blue cravat with the white polka dots; his coat and waistcoat hung over the back of his chair. At seven o'clock Willie Kirkpatrick, alias "Toughie," a boy who, after two terms in the Reform School, was now going to the Intermediate Prison, had brought in the bread and coffee. At eight o'clock Archie was turned into the corridor, and with him Blanco, the bigamist, whose two young wives were being held as witnesses in the women's quarter. Blanco was a barber, and he made himself useful by shaving the other prisoners. This morning, with scissors, razor, lather-brush and cup, he took especial pains with Archie. Now and then he paused, cocked his little head with its plume of black hair, and surveyed his handiwork with honest pride.
"I'll fix you up swell, Dutch, so's they'll have to acquit you."
From the cells came laughter. The prisoners began to josh Blanco–it was one of their few pastimes.
"Don't stand for one of them gilly hair-cuts, Dutch," cried Billy Whee, a porch-climber. "It'll be a fritzer, sure."
"Yes, he'll make your knob look like a mop."
"When I was doing my bit at the Pork Dump," began O'Grady, in the tone that portends a story; the cell doors began to rattle.
"Cheese it," cried the voices. They had grown tired of O'Grady's boasting.
After Archie had returned to his cell, an English thief whom they called the Duke, began to sing in a clear tenor voice, to the tune of Dixie:
"I wish there were no prisons,
I do, I does–'cause why?–
This old treadmill makes me feel ill,
I only pinch my belly for to fill,
Wi' me 'ands,
Wi' me dukes,
Wi' me clawrs,
Me mud hooks."
Archie scowled; he wished, for once, the Duke would keep still. He was trying to think, trying to assure himself that his trial would turn out well. Day after day, Marriott had come, and for hours he and Archie had sat in the long gray corridor, in the dry atmosphere of the overheated jail, conferring in whispers, because Archie knew Danner was listening at the peep-hole in the wall. Marriott was perplexed; how could he get Archie's true story before the jury? He had even consulted Elizabeth, told her the story.
"Oh, horrible!" she exclaimed. "But surely, you can tell the jury–surely they will sympathize."
He had shaken his head.
"Why not?"
"Because," said Marriott, "the rules of evidence are designed to keep out the truth."
"But can't Archie tell it?"
"I don't dare to let him take the stand."
"Why?"
"Because he'll be convicted if he does."
"And if he doesn't?"
"The same result–he'll be convicted. He's convicted now–the mob has already done that; the trial is only a conventional formality."
"What mob?"
"The newspapers, the preachers, the great moral, respectable mob that holds a man guilty until he proves himself innocent, and, if he asserts his innocence, looks even on that as a proof of his guilt."
Eades had announced that Archie would be tried for the murder of Kouka, and Elizabeth had been impressed.
"Wasn't that rather fine in him?" she asked.
"Yes," said Marriott, "and very clever."
"Clever?"
"He means to try him for the murder of Kouka, and convict him of the murder of Margaret Flanagan."
This morning then, Archie awaited the hour of his trial. The night before he had played solitaire, trying to read his fate in the fall of the fickle cards. The first game he had lost; then he decided that he was entitled to two out of three chances. He played again, and lost. Then he decided to play another–best three out of five–he might win the other two. He played and won the third game. He lost the fourth. And now he stood and waited. At half-past eight he drew on his waistcoat and his coat, giving them a final brushing. The Duke was singing again:
"An' I wish there were no bobbies,
I do, I does–'cause why?–
This oakum pickin' gives me such a lickin',
But still I likes to do a bit o' nickin',
Wi' me 'ands,
Wi' me dukes,
Wi' me clawrs,
Me mud hooks."
The last words of the song were punctuated by the clanging of the bolts.
"Koerner!" called out Danner's voice.
He was throwing the locks of Archie's cell from the big steel box by the door. Archie sprang to his feet, gave his cravat a final touch, and adjusted his coat. The steel door went gliding back in its hard grooves. He stepped out, thence through the other door, and there Danner waited. Archie held out his right hand, Danner slipped on the handcuff and its spring clicked. As they went out, cries came from the cells.
"So long, Archie! Good luck to ye!"
"Good luck!" came the chorus.
Archie, standing in the strange light outside the prison, seemed to take on a changed aspect. He had grown fat during his two months' idleness in jail; his skin was white and soft. Now in the gray light of the January morning, his face had lost the ruddy glow Blanco's shaving had imparted to it, and was pale. The snow lay on the ground, the air was cold and raw. Archie gasped in the surprise his lungs felt in this atmosphere, startling in its cold and freshness after the hot air of the steam-heated jail. He filled his lungs with the air and blew it out again in frost. A shudder ran through him. Danner was jovial for once.
"Fine day," he said.
Archie did not reply. He hated Danner more than he hated most people, and he hated every one, almost–save Marriott and Gusta, and his father and mother and the kids, and Elizabeth, who, as Marriott had reported to him, wished him well. The air and the light gave him pain–he shrank from them; he had not been outdoors since that day, a month before, when he had been taken over with Curly to be arraigned. He looked on the world again, the world that was so strange and new. Once more there swept over him that queer sensation that always came as he stepped out of prison, the sensation of fear, of uncertainty, a doubt of reality, the blur before his eyes. The streets were deserted, the houses still. The snow crunched frigidly under his heels. The handcuff chain clicked in the frost. A wagon turned the corner; the driver walked beside his steaming horses and flapped his arms about his shoulders; the wheels whined on the snow. Archie looked at the man; it was strange, he felt, that a man should be free to walk the streets and flap his arms that way.
XIII
The court-room was already crowded and buzzed with a pleasant yet excited hum of voices. Mrs. Koerner, the first to appear that morning, had been given a seat directly in front of the bailiff's elevated desk, where she was to sit, a conspicuous figure of sorrow through all the trial. The twenty-four aged men of the special venire were seated inside the bar; the reporters were at their table; two policemen, wearing their heavy overcoats as if they were no discomfort at all, were gossiping together; Giles, the court stenographer, grown old in automatic service, wandered about in a thin coat with ragged sleeves, its shoulders powdered by dandruff. The life that for so many years had been unfolded to him in a series of dramatic tableaux could have interested him but little; he seemed, indeed, to have reduced it to mere symbols–dashes, pothooks, points and outlines. At one of the trial tables sat Marriott. He was nervous, not having slept well the night before. At the table with him was Pennell, the young lawyer with the gift of the gab, who had been so unfortunate as to win the oratorical prize in college. Pennell, at the last moment, somehow–Marriott never knew exactly how–had insinuated himself into the case. He explained his appearance by saying, in his grand, mysterious way, that he had been engaged by "certain influential friends" of Archie's, who preferred to remain unknown. Archie, who did not know that he had any influential friends, could not explain Pennell's presence, but, feeling that the more lawyers he had the better, he was secretly glad, and Marriott, who bowed before the whole situation in a kind of helpless fatalism, made no objection.
But suddenly a change occurred. The atmosphere became electric. Men started up, their eyes glistened, they leaned forward, a low murmur arose; the old bailiff started violently, smote his marble slab with his gavel, and Mark Bentley, very red in the face, was seen striding toward the door, waving his authoritative hand and calling:
"Back there! Get back, I tell you!"
Archie had just been brought in. Danner led him to the trial table, and he took his seat, hid his manacled hands, and sat motionless, gazing straight before him, unconsciously obeying some long-hidden, obscure instinct of the hunted. But Marriott's hand had found his.
"How did you sleep last night?"
"Pretty well," said Archie as politely as possible, the occasion seeming to require those conventionalities of which he was so very uncertain.
"Well, we'll soon be at it now," said Marriott, thinking, however, of his own wretched night.
Archie watched Marriott tumble the papers out of his green bag and arrange his briefs and memoranda; he did not take his eyes from the green bag. Whenever he did, they met other eyes that looked at him with an expression that combined all the lower, brutish impulses–curiosity, fear and hate.
At half-past nine Glassford, having finished his cigar, entered the court-room. Directly behind him came Eades. The bailiff, who if he had been drowsing again, had been drowsing as always, with one eye on Glassford, now got to his feet, and, as Glassford ascended the bench, struck the marble slab with the gavel and in the instant stillness, repeated his worn formula.
"The case of the State versus Archie Koerner," said Glassford, reading from his docket. He glanced over his gold glasses at Marriott.
"Are you ready for trial, Mr. Marriott?"
"We are ready, your Honor."
Danner unlocked the handcuffs from Archie's wrists. The reporters began writing feverishly; already messenger boys were coming and going. Gard, the clerk, was calling the roll of the venire-men, and when he had done, it was time for the lawyers to begin examining them; but before this could be done, it was necessary that a formula be repeated to them, and Gard told them to stand up. As soon as they could comprehend his meaning, they got to their feet with their various difficulties, and Gard proceeded:
"'You and each of you do solemnly swear'–hold up your right hands–'that the answers you are about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, s'elp you God.'"
And then, in a lower voice, as if the real business were now to begin, he called:
"William C. McGiffert."
An aged man came forward leaning on a crooked cane, and took the witness-stand. Eades began his examination by telling McGiffert about the death of Kouka, and, when he had finished, asked him if he had ever heard of it, or read of it, or formed or expressed an opinion about it, if he were related to Koerner, or to Marriott, or to Pennell, or had ever employed them, or either of them, as attorney. Then he asked McGiffert if Lamborn or himself had acted as his attorney; finally, with an air of the utmost fairness, as if he would not for worlds have any but an entirely unprejudiced jury, he appealed to McGiffert to tell whether he knew of any reason why he could not give Koerner a fair and impartial trial and render a verdict according to the law and the evidence. McGiffert had shaken his head hastily at each one of Eades's questions. Eades paused impressively, then asked a question that sent a thrill through the onlookers.
"Mr. McGiffert, have you any conscientious scruples against capital punishment?"
The suggestive possibility affected men strangely; they leaned forward, hanging on the reply. McGiffert shook his aged head again as if it were a gratuitous reflection on his character to hint at his being in any way unfit for this office.
Eades, having had McGiffert on many juries and knowing that he invariably voted for conviction, with a graceful gesture of his white hand, waved him, as it were, to Marriott.
Marriott, after an examination he knew was hopeless from the start, found no cause for challenge; and after Glassford, as if some deeper possibilities had occurred to his superior mind, had asked McGiffert about his age and his health, McGiffert, with the relief of a man who has passed successfully through an ordeal, climbed hastily into the jury-box and retreated to its farthest corner, as if it were a safe place from which he could not be dislodged.
One by one the venire-men were examined; several were excused. One old man, although he protested, was manifestly deaf, another had employed Eades, another rose and, hanging over the desk, whispered to Glassford, who immediately excused him because of physical disability; finally, by noon, the panel was full.
Marriott scanned the twelve bearded men. Viewed as a whole, they seemed well to typify the great institution of the English law, centuries old; their beards clung to them like the gray moss of a live-oak, hoary with age. But these patriarchal beards could lend little dignity. The old men sat there suggesting the diseases of age–rheumatism, lumbago, palsy–death and decay. Their faces were mere masks of clay; they were lacking in imagination, in humor, in sympathy, in pity, in mercy, all the high human qualities having long ago died within them, leaving their bodies untenanted. He knew they were ready at that moment to convict Archie. He had sixteen peremptory challenges, and as he reflected that these would soon be exhausted and that the men who were thus excused would be replaced by others just like them, a despair seized him. But it was imperative to get rid of these; they were, for the most part, professional jurors who would invariably vote for the state. He must begin to use those precious peremptory challenges and compel the court to issue special venires; in the haste and confusion men might be found who would be less professional and more intelligent. In this case, involving, as it did, the Flanagan case, he needed strong, independent men, whereas Eades required instead weak, subservient and stupid men–men with crystallized minds, dull, orthodox, inaccessible to ideas. Furthermore, Marriott recalled that juries are not made up of twelve men, as the law boasts, but of two or three men, or more often, of one man stronger than the rest, who dominates his fellows, lays his masterful will upon them, and bends them to his wishes and his prejudices. Perhaps, in some special venire, quite by accident, when the sheriff's deputies began to scour the town, there might be found one such man, who, for some obscure reason, would incline to Archie's side. On such a caprice of fate hung Archie's life.
"Mr. Marriott, the court is waiting," said Glassford.
"If your Honor will indulge us a moment." Then Marriott whispered to Archie.
"Je's," said Archie. "Looks cheesy to me. Looks to me like a lot o' rummy blokes. They've got it all framed up now. Them old hoosiers would cop the cush all right." Archie whispered with the sneering cynicism of one who holds the belief of the all-powerful influence of money. "That old harp back there in the corner with the green benny on, he looks like a bull to me. Go after him and knock him off."
Archie had indicated quite openly an aged Irishman who sat huddled in a faded overcoat in the rear row. He had white chin-whiskers and a long, broad, clean-shaven upper lip.
"Mr. McGee," said Marriott, rising, "what business are you in?"
"Oi'm retired, sor."
"Were you ever on the police force?"
"Well, sor," said McGee uneasily, "Oi wor wance, sor–yes, sor."
He looked up now with a nonchalant air.
"How long were you on the force?"
"Twinty-wan years, sor."
Marriott questioned him at length, finally challenged him for cause; Eades objected, they argued, and Glassford overruled the challenge. Then, having certainly offended McGee, there was nothing for Marriott to do but to submit a peremptory challenge.
By night the venire was exhausted and Glassford ordered a special venire. With the serving of the special venires, a difference was noted; whereas the men on the first venire had studied how they should qualify themselves for jury service, the men whom Bentley and his deputies now haled into court, studied how they should disqualify themselves. They were all impatient of the senseless tedium, of the costly interruption, being men with real work to do. They replied like experts; all had read of the case, all had formed and expressed opinions, and their opinions could not be shaken by any evidence that might be adduced. Glassford plied them with metaphysical questions; drew psychological distinctions; but in vain. Many of them had scruples against capital punishment; a score of them, fifty of them swore to this, to the delight but disappointment of Marriott, the discomfiture of Eades, the perplexity of Glassford, and the dull amazement of the men in the jury-box, who had no conscientious scruples against anything. Still others had certificates of various kinds exempting them from jury service, which they exhibited with calm smiles and were excused.
Marriott eked out his precious peremptory challenges for three days; venire after venire was issued, and Bentley was happy, for all this meant fees. The crowd diminished. The lawyers grew weary and no longer exerted themselves to say clever things. The sky, which had sparkled a cold, frosty blue for days, was overcast with gray clouds, the atmosphere was saturated with a chill and penetrating moisture. This atmosphere affected men strangely. Eades and Marriott had a dispute, Danner ordered Archie to sit erect, Glassford sharply rebuked two citizens who did not believe in capital punishment for their lack of a sense of civic duty; then he whirled about in his chair and exclaimed angrily:
"We'll not adjourn to-night until we have a jury!"
Marriott had one peremptory challenge left, and eleven men had been accepted. It was now a matter of luck.
"George Holden," called the clerk.
A broad-shouldered man of medium height came promptly forward, took the oath, leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs, folded his strong hands in his lap, and raised a pair of deep blue eyes to Eades. As he sat there, something in the poise of his fine head, with its thick curly hair, claimed attention; interest revived; every one looked at him. He had a smooth-shaven face and a wide white brow, and the collar of his dark flannel shirt was open, freeing his strong neck and ample throat. Marriott suddenly conceived a liking for the man.
"What is your occupation, Mr. Holden?" asked Eades.
"Machinist."
He had read the newspaper accounts of the murder of Kouka and of the Flanagan tragedy, but he had not formed any real opinions; he may have formed impressions, but he could lay them aside; he didn't go much anyway, he said, on what he read in the newspapers.
The formal questions were put and answered to Eades's satisfaction; then came the real question:
"Are you opposed to capital punishment?"
"Yes, sir, I am."
"Are your scruples conscientious ones?"
"Yes, sir."
"And not to be overcome?"
"They are not to be overcome."
Just then Glassford, impatient of all these scruples he was hearing so much about, whirled on Holden with a scowl. Holden turned; his blue eyes met those of Glassford.
"You don't want to sit on this jury, do you?" demanded Glassford.
"No, sir."
"It would interfere with your business, wouldn't it?"
"No, sir."
"It wouldn't? You earn good wages, don't you?"
"I'm out of a job now, sir."
"Well, are your scruples such that you can't lay them aside long enough to do your duty as a citizen?"
Holden flushed.
"I can't lay them aside, no; but it doesn't follow that I can't do my duty as a citizen."
"But," began Glassford in his tone of legal argument, "assuming that the law as it is should be altered, nevertheless, knowing the law, can you lay aside your private views and perform a public duty by applying this law to a given state of facts as the court instructs you?–You understand me, do you?"
"I understand perfectly, sir."
"Well, what do you say?"
"I have no private views that are not public ones; I can't see any distinction. I say that I would not take an oath that might oblige me to vote to kill a man."
The atmosphere became tense.
"But assuming you had taken an oath, would you rather break that oath than discharge your duty?"
"I wouldn't take such an oath."
"Then you place your private opinions above the law, do you?"
"In this instance, I do. I don't believe in that law, and I won't help enforce it."
"You mean,"–Glassford was plainly angry–"that you wouldn't take an oath to enforce a law you didn't believe in?"
"That's just what I mean."
Glassford looked an instant at Holden as if trying to decide what he had better do with him for these heresies. Holden's blue eyes were steady; they returned Glassford's gaze, seeming scarcely to wink. And just then Eades, fearing the effect of the man's scruples on the jury, thought best to relieve the situation.
"We submit a challenge for cause," he said.
"Allowed," Glassford snapped. "We don't want such men as you on juries."
He whirled about in his chair, turned his back on Holden, and as Holden walked directly from the courtroom, the eyes of all followed him, with a strange interest in a man who was considered unfit for jury service because he had principles he would not forego.
"Samuel Walker," called Gard.
An aged, doddering man tottered to the chair. He scarcely spoke in answer to Eades's questions; when he did, it was in the weak, quavering voice of senility. He had no occupation, knew none of the lawyers, had no knowledge of the case, had neither formed nor expressed opinions, and had no scruples against capital punishment.
"You believe that the laws should be executed and upheld?" said Eades in an insinuating tone.
"Heh?" said the old man, leaning forward with an open palm behind his hairy ear.
Eades repeated the question and the fellow nodded.
Marriott turned in disgust from this stupid, senile man who was qualified, as impatiently as Glassford had turned from the intelligent man who was disqualified. And then, just as Walker was making for the jury-box, Marriott used his last peremptory challenge.
A moment later he saw his mistake. Gard was calling a name he knew.
"William A. Broadwell."
The short winter afternoon was closing in. For half an hour shadows had been stealing wearily through the room; the spectators had become a blurred mass, the jurymen lounging in the box had grown indistinct in the gloom. For some time, the green shade of the electric lamp on the clerk's desk had been glowing, but now, as Broadwell came forward, the old bailiff, shuffling across the floor, suddenly switched on the electricity, and group by group, cluster by cluster, the bulbs sprang into light, first in the ceiling, then on the walls, then about the judge's bench. There was a touch of the theatrical in it, for the lights seemed to have been switched on to illuminate the entrance of this important man.
He was sworn and took the witness-chair, which he completely filled, and clasped his white hands across his round paunch with an air that savored of piety and unction. The few gray hairs glistening at the sides of his round bald head gave it a tonsured appearance; fat enfolded his skull, rounding at his temples, swelling on his clean-shaven, monkish cheeks, falling in folds like dewlaps over his linen collar. He sat there with satisfaction, breathing heavily, making no movement, excepting as to his thin lips which he pursed now and then as if to adjust them more and more perfectly to what he considered the proper expression of impeccability. Marriott was utterly sick at heart. For he knew William A. Broadwell, orthodox, formal, eminently respectable, a server on committees, a deacon with certain cheap honors of the churchly kind, a Pharisee of the Pharisees.
In his low solemn voice, pursing his lips nicely after each sentence as if his own words tasted good to him, Broadwell answered Eades's questions; he had no opposition to capital punishment, indeed, he added quite gratuitously, he believed in supporting it; he had great veneration for the law, and–oh, yes, he had read accounts of the murder; read them merely because he esteemed it a citizen's duty to be conversant with affairs of the day, and he had formed opinions as any intelligent man must necessarily.
"But you could lay aside those opinions and reach a conclusion based purely on evidence, of course, Mr. Broadwell?"
"Oh, yes, sir," said Broadwell, with an unctuous smile that deprecated the idea of his being influenced in any but the legitimate way.
"We are thoroughly satisfied with Mr. Broadwell, your Honor," said Eades.
"One minute, Mr. Broadwell," began Marriott.
Glassford looked at Marriott the surprise he felt at his presumption, and Marriott felt an opposition in the room. Broadwell shifted slightly, pursed his lips smugly and looked down on Marriott with his wise benevolence.
"Mr. Broadwell, you say you read the accounts of the tragedy?"
"Yes."
"Did you read all of them?"
"I believe so."
"Read the report of the evidence given on the preliminary hearing?"
"Yes."
"Read the editorials in the Courier?"
"Yes."
"You respect its opinions?"
"I do, yes."
"Your pastor preached a sermon on this case, did he not?"
"He made applications of it in an illustrative way."
"Quite edifying, of course?"
Marriott knew he had made a mistake, but the impulse to have this fling had been irresistible. Broadwell bowed coldly.
"And all these things influenced you?"
"Yes."
"Exactly. And on them you have formed an opinion respecting the guilt or innocence of this young man?"
Broadwell cast a hasty sidelong glance at Glassford, as if this had gone quite far enough, but he said patiently:
"Yes."
"And it would require evidence to remove that opinion?"
"I presume it would."
"You know it would, don't you?"
"Yes."
"We submit a challenge for cause, your Honor," said Marriott.
Glassford turned to Broadwell with an air that told how speedily he would make an end of this business.
"You have talked with none of the witnesses, Mr. Broadwell?"
"Oh, no, sir," said Broadwell, smiling at the absurdity.
"The accounts you read were not stenographic reports of the evidence?"
"No, sir; abstracts, rather, I should say."
"Exactly. Were the conclusions you came to opinions, or mere impressions?"
"Mere impressions I should say, your Honor."
"They are not to be dignified by the name of opinions?"
"Hardly, your Honor."
"If they were, you could lay them aside and try this case on its merits, basing your judgment on the evidence as it is adduced, and on the law as the court shall declare it to you?"
"Certainly, your Honor."
Glassford turned away.
"If the court," he said, "had any doubts in this matter, they would be resolved in favor of the defendant, but the court has none. My own knowledge of Mr. Broadwell and of his standing in the community leads me to declare that he is the very man for such important service, and the court feels that we are to be congratulated on having him to assist us in trying this case. The challenge is overruled. You may take your seat in the jury-box, Mr. Broadwell."
Glassford consulted his notes; the peremptory challenges were all exhausted now.
"The jury will rise and be sworn," he said.
Marriott had suffered his first defeat. He looked at the jury. A change had taken place; these twelve men no longer impressed him as an institution grown old and gray with the waste of ages. They no longer held for him any symbolic meaning; little by little, during the long, tedious hours, individualities had developed, the idea of unity had receded. Seen thus closely and with increasing familiarity, the formal disappeared, the man emerged from the mass, and Marriott found himself face to face with the personal equation. He sat with one arm thrown over the back of his chair and looked at them, watching, as it were, this institution disintegrate into men, merely; men without the inspiration of noble ideals, swayed by primitive impulses, unconsciously responsive to the obscure and mysterious currents of human feeling then flowing through the minds of the people, generating and setting in motion vague, terrible and irresistible powers. He could feel those strange, occult currents moving in him–he must set himself against them that he might stand, though all alone, for the ignorant boy whose soul had strayed so far.
He studied the faces of the twelve men, trying to discover some hope, some means of moving and winning them. There was old McGiffert, who alone of all the first venire had withstood the mutations of the last four days, sitting serene and triumphant, sure of his two dollars a day, utterly unconscious of the grave and tragic significance of the responsibilities he had been so anxious to assume. There was Osgood, the contractor, a long row of cigars, a tooth-brush, and a narrow comb sticking out of his waistcoat pocket; Duncan, with his short sandy hair covering sparsely a red scalp that moved curiously when he uttered certain words; Foley, constantly munching his tobacco, as he had been doing for sixty years, so that when he spoke he did so with closed lips; Slade, the man with the rough red face, who found, as Marriott had at first thought, amusement in everything, for he smiled often, showing his gums and a row of tiny unclean teeth; there was Grey, constantly moving his false teeth about in his mouth; Church, with thin gray hair, white mustache and one large front tooth that pressed into his lower lip; and then Menard, the grocer's clerk, wearing black clothes that long ago had passed out of fashion; his sallow, thin, unhealthy face wearing an expression of fright. Marriott recalled how uncertain Menard had been in his notions about capital punishment; how, at first, he had said he was opposed to it, and how at last, under Glassford's metaphysical distinctions, the boy had declared that he would do his duty. Marriott had been encouraged, thinking that Menard's natural impulses might reassert themselves, but now, alas, he recognized that Menard in the hands of other men would be but the putty he so much resembled. Then there were Reder, the gray old German, and Chisholm and McCann, the aged farmers with the unkempt beards, and Broadwell–ah, Broadwell! For it was Broadwell who held Marriott's gaze at last, as he held his interest; it was Broadwell, indeed, who was that jury. Naturally stronger than the rest, his reputation, his pomposity, the character Glassford had generously given him–all these marked him as the man who would reach that jury's verdict for it, and then, as foreman, solemnly bear it in. Marriott looked at him, smug, sleek, overfed, unctuous, his shining bald head inclined at a meek angle, his little eyes half closed, his pendulous jowls hiding his collar, and realized that this was the man to whom he had to try Archie's case, and he would rather have tried the case to any other man in town. He wished that he had used his challenges differently; any other twelve of the two hundred men who had been summoned would have served his purpose better; he had a wild, impotent regret that he had not allowed the last man to remain before Broadwell suddenly appeared. Broadwell was standing there now with the others, his hand raised, his head thrown back, stretching the white flabby skin of his throat like a frog's, his eyes closed, as if he were about to pronounce a benediction on Archie before sending him to his doom.