Moxlow’s speech lasted three hours, and when he ended a burning mist was before North’s eyes.  He saw vaguely the tall figure of the prosecuting attorney sink into a chair, and he gave a great sigh of relief.  Perhaps North expected Belknap to perform some miracle of vindication in his behalf, certainly when his counsel advanced to the rail that guarded the bench there were both authority and confidence in his manner, and soon the dingy court room was echoing to the strident tones of the old criminal lawyer’s voice.  As the minutes passed, however, it became a certainty with North that no miracle would happen.

Belknap concluded his plea shortly before six o’clock.  And this was the end,—­this was the last move in the game where his life was the stake!  In spite of his exhaustion of mind and body North had followed the speech with the closest attention.  He told himself now, that the state’s case was unshaken, that the facts, stubborn and damning, were not to be brushed aside.

Moxlow’s answer to Belknap’s plea was brief, occupying little more than half an hour, and the trial was ended.  It rested with the jury ’to say whether John North was innocent or guilty.  As the jury filed from the room North realized this with a feeling of relief in that that at last the miserable ordeal was over.  He had never been quite bereft of hope, the consciousness of his own innocence had measurably sustained him in his darkest hours.  And now once more his imagination swept him beyond the present into the future; again he could believe that he was to pass from that room a free man to take his place in the world from which he had these many weary months been excluded.  There was no bitterness in his heart toward any one, even Moxlow’s harsh denunciation of him was forgotten; the law through its bungling agents had laid its savage hands on him, that was all, and these agents had merely done what they conceived to be their duty.

He glanced toward the big clock on the wall above the judge’s desk and saw that thirty minutes had already gone by since the jury retired.  Another half-hour passed while he studied the face of the clock, but the door of the jury room, near which Deputy-sheriff Brockett had taken up his station, still remained closed and no sound came from beyond it.  At his back he heard one man whisper to another that the jurymen’s dinner had just been brought in from the hotel.

“That means another three quarters of an hour,—­it’s their last chance to get a square meal at the county’s expense!” the speaker added, which earned him a neighboring ripple of laughter.

Judge Langham and Moxlow had withdrawn to the former’s private room.  Sheriff Conklin touched North on the shoulder.

“I guess we’d better go back, John!” he said.  “If they want us to-night they can send for us.”