Searle was nettled by the easy compactness with which the minister cemented the walls of his defense more closely by each reply to the questions in cross-examination.
"You are aware, Mr. Hampstead," he thundered with a sudden change of tactics, "that the act which you have just set forth, so far from setting up a defense to this charge, proves you guilty under the law as an accessory after the fact."
"I am not aware of it," replied the minister, with distinct emphasis. "My impression was that the law considers not only an act but the intent of the act. The intent of my act was not to conceal a crime, but to reconstruct the character of a man."
Searle darted a hasty and apprehensive glance at the massed faces behind the rail.
"That is all," he exclaimed dramatically, with a cynical smile and an uptoss of his hands, calculated cleverly to portray his opinion of the utter lack of standing such replies as those of the minister could gain him in a court of justice.
Judge Brennan looked at Hampstead. "Have you anything in rebuttal?" he asked.
"Nothing," replied the minister, arising and stepping down to his chair at the long table, where he remained standing while the attentive expression of Court and spectators indicated appreciation that the climax of the defendant's effort was at hand.
The very bigness of the thing the man was trying to do was in some sense an attest of character, and here and there among the onlookers ran little currents of reviving sympathy for the clergyman, who stood waiting quietly for the moment in which to begin his final effort as an attorney in his own behalf.
Keenly sensitive to the subtlest emotions of the crowd,
