THE STEADFAST HEART
tention from the matter in hand. Crane was more meticulous, but twelve good and true men were sworn and ready to listen to testimony long before the noon recess.
Angus Burke, released from Pilkinton’s handcuff, was seated beside Craig Browning. One might have expected his attorney would have seen to it he was combed and washed and made as pleasing to the eye as possible—to create upon the jury a favorable impression. But it was not so. His hair was straggling and unkempt; his face not altogether clean. His clothes were no better, no more thoroughly provided with buttons than when Alvin Trueman first saw him laboring at the woodpile. A saddening, neglected, friendless little figure he was—as Browning wished him to be.
The boy sat immovable, looking straight in front of him as if unconscious of the presence of other human beings…. On entering the courtroom he had cast upon the huddled crowd a startled glance, and one tinged with curiosity at the judge upon his raised platform—as if he wondered vaguely why he had been placed there. After that he had fallen into that apathy which seemed his habitual state of mind…. He was a frowzy, pitiful object, dull, expressionless, apparently without realization of the straits he was
45
