hush informed him that his hour had arrived, which at a time less momentous would have unnerved him altogether, and he rose to his feet, to such an extent was he surcharged with emotion that at first he could not begin.
Every eye in the crowded building was strained upon him almost painfully, as he stood with locked lips looking at an old woman in a bright red shawl in the public gallery. He was as pale as a ghost, his cheeks were so cadaverous that in the murky light of the gaslit winter afternoon they presented the appearance of bones divested of their flesh. But there was a profound faith among the majority of the slow-breathing multitude. Since the morning the name of the advocate had come to be bruited among them; and in spite of his silence, which was grinding against their tense nerves, there was that in his bearing which excluded all sense of foreboding from their minds.
A full minute passed in complete silence while the advocate stood staring at the old woman in the red shawl. At last his lips were unsealed, slowly and reluctantly; the first words that proceeded from them were of a quietude which pinned every thought. All listened with a painful intensity without knowing why.
"My lord, gentlemen of the jury: It is with feelings of awe that I address you. This is the first occasion on which my inexperience has been summoned to bear the yoke of a great task; and here on its threshold I confess to you without shame that I should faint under its burden, had I not the knowledge that I hold a mandate to plead the cause of not the least of God's creatures.
