“But, yo’ Honah, the heavens will open!  They will send down a bolt o’ justice.  Nay, they would send down upon ouah heads a forked messenger o’ wrath it we should fail to administer justice, fail to do that juty intrusted into ouah hands!  There sets the man!  There he is befo’ you!  His guilt has been admitted.  Answer me, gentlemen, what is ouah juty in this case?  Shall we set this incarnate fiend free in the lan’ again—­shall we let him come clear o’ this charge—­shall we turn him loose again in ouah midst to murder some other of ouah citizens?  Shall we set this man free?” His voice had sunk into a whisper as he spoke the last words, leaning forward and looking into the faces of the jury.  Suddenly he straightened up, his clinched hand shaken high above his head.

“No!” he cried.  “No!  I say to you, ten thousand times no!  We are a people quiet an’ law-abidin’.  We have set ouah hands to the conquest o’ this lan’.  We have driven out the savages, an’ we have erected heah the vine an’ fig tree of a new community.  We have brought hither ouah flocks an’ herds.  We shall not allow crime, red-handed an’ on-rebuked, to stalk through the quiet streets of ouah law-abidin’, moral town!  This man shall not go free!  Justice, yo’ Honah, justice, gentlemen, is what this community asks.  An’ justice is what it is a-goin’ to have.  Yo’ Honah, an’ gentlemen, I yiel’ to the statement o’ the defence.”

Franklin rose and looked calmly about him while the buzzing of comment and the outspoken exclamations of applause yet greeted the speech of the prosecutor.  He knew that Curly’s thoughtless earlier description of the scene of the arrest would in advance be held as much evidence in the trial as any sworn testimony given in the court.  Still, the sentiment of pity was strong in his heart.  He resolved to use all he knew of the cunning of the law to save this half-witted savage.  He determined to defeat, if possible, the ends of a technical justice, in order to secure a higher and a broader justice, the charity of a divine mercy.  As the lawyer, the agent of organized society, he purposed to invoke the law in order to defeat the law in this, the first trial, for this, the first hostage ever given to civilization on the old cattle range.  He prayed to see triumph an actual justice and not the old blind spirit of revenge.  He realized fully how much was there to overcome as he gazed upon the set faces of the real jury, the crowd of grim spectators.  Yet in his soul there sprang so clear a conviction of his duty that he felt all fogs clear away, leaving his intelligence calm, clear, dispassionate, with full understanding of the best means to obtain his end.  He knew that argument is the best answer to oratory.

“Your Honour, and gentlemen of the jury,” he began, “in defending this man I stand for the law.  The representative of the State invokes the law.

“What is that law?  Is it violence for violence, hatred for unreasoning hate?  Is that the law?  Or is the love of justice, the love of fair play, at the heart of the law?  What do you say?  Is it not right for any man to have a fair chance?