第29章 CHAPTER VII CONDEMNED(5)

The moment came when Mrs. Fitzpatrick's emotions rendered her speechless. With a great show of sympathy, Mr. O'Hara approached the witness, and offering her a glass of water, found opportunity to whisper, "Not another word, on your soul."

"Surely," he said, appealing to the judge in a voice trembling with indignant feeling, "my learned friend will not further harass this witness."

"Let her go, in Heaven's name," said Staunton testily; "we want no more of her."

"So I should suppose," replied O'Hara drily.

With Mrs. Fitzpatrick, the case for the Crown was closed. To the surprise of all, and especially of the Counsel for the Crown, O'Hara called no witnesses and offered no evidence in rebuttal of that before the court. This made it necessary for Staunton to go on at once with his final address to the jury.

Seldom in all his experience had he appeared to such poor advantage as on that day. The court was still breathing the atmosphere of Mrs. Fitzpatrick's rude and impassioned appeal. The lawyer was still feeling the sting of his humiliating failure with his star witness, and O'Hara's unexpected move surprised and flustered him, old hand as he was. With halting words and without his usual assurance, he reviewed the evidence and asked for a conviction on both charges.

With O'Hara it was quite otherwise. It was in just such a desperate situation that he was at his best. The plight of the prisoner, lonely, beaten and defenceless, appealed to his chivalry.

Then, too, O'Hara, by blood and tradition, was a revolutionist.

In every "rising" during the last two hundred years of Ireland's struggles, some of his ancestors had carried a pike or trailed a musket, and the rebel blood in him cried sympathy with the Nihilist in his devotion to a hopeless cause. And hence the passion and the almost tearful vehemence that he threw into his final address were something more than professional.

With great skill he took his cue from the evidence of the last witness. He drew a picture of the Russian Nihilist hunted like "a partridge on the mountains," seeking for himself and his compatriots a home and safety in this land of liberty. With vehement scorn he told the story of the base treachery of Rosenblatt, "a Government spy, a thief, a debaucher of women, and were I permitted, gentlemen, I could unfold a tale in this connection such as would wring your hearts with grief and indignation. But my client will not permit that the veil be drawn from scenes that would bring shame to the honoured name he wears."

With consummate art the lawyer turned the minds of the jury from the element of personal vengeance in the crime committed to that of retribution for political infidelity, till under his manipulation the prisoner was made to appear in the role of patriot and martyr doomed to suffer for his devotion to his cause.

"But, gentlemen, though I might appeal to your passions, I scorn to do so. I urge you to weigh calmly, deliberately, as cool, level-headed Canadians, the evidence produced by the prosecution. A crime has been committed, a most revolting crime,--one man killed, another seriously wounded. But what is the nature of this crime?

Has it been shown either to be murder or attempted murder? You must have noticed, gentlemen, how utterly the prosecution has failed to establish any such charge. The suggestion of murder comes solely from the man who has so deeply wronged and has pursued with such deadly venom the unfortunate prisoner at the bar. This man, after betraying the cause of freedom, after wrecking the prisoner's home and family, after proving traitor to every trust imposed in him, now seeks to fasten upon his victim this horrid crime of murder. His is the sole evidence. What sort of man is this upon whose unsupported testimony you are asked to send a fellow human being to the scaffold? Think calmly, gentlemen, is he such a man as you can readily believe? Is his highly coloured story credible? Are you so gullible as to be taken in with this melodrama? Gentlemen, I know you, I know my fellow citizens too well to think that you will be so deceived.

"Now what are the facts, the bare facts, the cold facts, gentlemen?

And we are here to deal with facts. Here they are. There is a wedding. My learned friend is not interested in weddings, not perhaps as much interested as he should be, and as such apparently, he excites the pity of his friends."

This sally turned all eyes towards Mrs. Fitzpatrick, and a broad smile spread over the court.

"There is a wedding, as I was saying. Unhappily the wedding feast, as is too often the case with our foreign citizens, degenerates into a drunken brawl. It is a convenient occasion for paying off old scores. There is general melee, a scrap, in short. Suddenly these two men come face to face, their passions inflamed. On the one hand there is a burning sense of wrong, on the other an unquenchable hate. For, gentlemen, remember, the man that hates you most venomously is the man who has wronged you most deeply.