“Always, your honor,” he declared, “I am mistaken for that scoundrel; that Stuart....  I am a decent man ... but what is the use?  I say it’s terrible....”

“Judge” Spence removed his eyeglasses and wiped them nervously; “does anyone in the courtroom recognize this man as Thomas Berdue?”

There was silence.  Then a hand rose.  “I do,” said the voice of a waterfront merchant.  “I’ve done business with him under that name.”

Immediately there was an uproar.  “A confederate,” cried voices.  “Put him out.”  A woman’s voice in the background shrieked out shrilly, “Hang him, too!”

McAllister rose.  “There must be order here,” he said, commandingly and the tumult subsided.  McAllister addressed Berdue’s sponsor.  “Can you bring anyone else to corroborate your testimony?”

The merchant, red and angry, cried:  “It’s nothing to me; hang him and be damned—­if you don’t want the truth.  I’m not looking for trouble.”  He turned away but the prisoner called to him piteously.  “Don’t desert me.  Find Jones or Murphy down at the long wharf.  They’ll identify me....  Hurry!  Hurry! ... or they’ll string me up!”

“All right,” agreed the other reluctantly.  He left the court room and Judge Shattuck moved a postponement of the case.

“Your honor,” William Coleman now addressed the court, “this is no ordinary trial.  Ten thousand people are around this courthouse.  They are there because the public patience with legal decorum is exhausted; however regular and reasonable my colleague’s plea might be in ordinary circumstances, I warn you that to grant it will provoke disorder.”

Judge Shattuck, startled, glanced out of the window and conferred with Hall McAllister.

“I withdraw my petition,” he said hurriedly.  The case went on.

Witnesses who were present when the prisoners were identified by Jansen gave their testimony.  There was little cross-examination, though McAllister established Jansen’s incomplete recovery of his mental faculties when the men were brought before him.  Coleman pointed out the striking appearance of the older prisoner; there was little chance to err he claimed in such a case.  The record of James Stuart was then dwelt upon; a history black with evil doing, red with blood.  The jury retired with the sinister determined faces of men who have made up their minds.

Meanwhile, outside, the crowd stood waiting, none too patiently.  Now and then a messenger came to the balcony and shouted out the latest aspect of the drama being enacted inside.  The word was caught up by the first auditor, passed along to right and left until the whole throng knew and speculated on each bit of information.