The party returned to Geneva, and the next day Duncan was formally arraigned.  He waived an examination, and in default of bail was removed to the county prison, where his confederates were already confined, anxiously awaiting their trial.

CHAPTER XXVI.

Conclusion—­Retribution.

A few days later, and the last act in this sad drama of crime was performed.  The four youthful criminals were arraigned for trial before a conscientious judge, and by a jury composed of gentlemen, many of whom were intimately acquainted with two of the accused, Eugene Pearson and Dr. Johnson, both of whom, it will be remembered, were born and reared in the little town of Geneva.  As may be imagined, the trial attracted universal attention in that section of the country, and on the day that the court was convened, the town was filled with people from all the surrounding districts, who came to witness the important proceedings.  Long before the hour fixed for the commencement of the trial, the court-room was crowded to suffocation by the eager multitude, who had come from far and near, for the purpose of being present at this unusual judicial investigation.  Many were actuated only by the promptings of idle curiosity, and regarded the trial somewhat in the light of a diverting exhibition, for which no admission fee was charged; others, from a stern sense of justice, came to view a trial in which crime was to be punished, and the law in all its majesty was to be invoked for the protection of the honor of society, and the property of the individual.  There was yet another class, who came from the impulses of love and sympathy and friendship—­some who were linked to the unfortunate criminals by the ties of family and blood, and some who had known and esteemed them ere their hearts had been hardened, and before the wiles of the tempter had lured them from the paths of honor and virtue.  There were present also the gray-haired father and mother of Eugene Pearson, broken and bowed with the grief and shame which had been brought upon them by the crimes of their beloved son; the aged parents of Dr. Johnson, who had come to witness, with saddened hearts, the doom of their darling boy; the young wife of Newton Edwards, who in the moment of her husband’s ruin had, with true womanly devotion, forgotten his past acts of cruelty and harshness, and now, with aching heart and tear-stained eyes, was waiting, with fear and trembling, to hear the dreaded judgment pronounced upon the man whom she had sworn to “love and cherish” through “good and evil report.”

Since his incarceration she had been a constant visitor to his cell, and by her love and sympathy had sought to uphold the fallen man in the dark hours of his shame and disgrace.  Here also was the aged father of Thomas Duncan, the only friend whom the young man had in all that vast assembly.  Though his face was stern and immovable, yet the quivering of the lips and the nervous trembling of the wrinkled hands told too plainly that he too was suffering beyond expression in the sorrow that had been wrought by the boy who in his early years had been his pride and joy.