of evidence as a seamless garment of truth, and you can dismiss the complaint with an untroubled brow. Reason is satisfied! Justice is done!"
Hampstead paused, and a shade of apprehension came to his face, for his eye had traveled for a moment to that massed expectancy without the rail.
"The verdict of your Honor is to me,"—Hampstead in his growing earnestness had abandoned the fictional distinction between the pleader and his client,—"of more than usual importance, for by it hangs the verdict of the people whose interest is attested by those packed benches yonder. Without disrespect to your Honor, I can say that I care more for their verdict than for that of any twelve men in any jury box or any judge upon any bench.
"But under the circumstances the whole people cannot actually judge—they can only be my executioners. They have not heard me speak. They can not look me in the eye, nor observe by my demeanor whether I speak like an honest man or a contemptible fraud. They see me only through a cloud of skillfully engendered suspicion. They hear my voice only faintly amid a clamorous confusion of poisoned tongues. Your Honor must see for them, and speak for them. Your Honor's verdict will be their verdict. I tremble for that verdict. I plead for it!
"I ask your Honor to take account of the difficulty of my position, presuming, as the law instructs the Court to presume, that it is the position of an innocent person. Bound by the most inviolable vow which a man can take, I am unable to offer to you a conclusive defense by presenting the man who committed the crime. He may be in this court room now, cowering with a consciousness of his guilt and in awe at beholding its consequences to the one who has helped him. He may be an officer of this Court; he might be your Honor, sitting upon the
