Any evidence which
justified the charge of murder would mean not jail, but the rope in due
course; for this was not Montana or Idaho, where the law's delays
outlasted even the memory of the crime committed.
The court-room of Askatoon was crowded to suffocation, for the
M'Mahons were detested, and the murdered man had a good reputation in
the district. Besides, a widow and three children mourned their loss,
and the widow was in court. Also Crozier's evidence was expected to be
sensational, and to prove the swivel on which the fate of the accused man
would hang. Among those on the inside it was also known that the clever
but dissipated Augustus Burlingame, the counsel for the prisoner, had a
grudge against Crozier,--no one quite knew why except Kitty Tynan and her
mother, and that cross-examination would be pressed mercilessly when
Crozier entered the witness-box. As Burlingame came into the court-room
he said to the Young Doctor--he was always spoken of as the Young Doctor
in Askatoon, though he had been there a good many years and he was no
longer as young as he looked--who was also called as a witness, "We'll
know more about Mr. J. G. Kerry when this trial is over than will suit
his book." It did not occur to Augustus Burlingame that in Crozier, who
knew why he had fled the house of the showy but virtuous Mrs. Tynan, he
might find a witness of a mental and moral calibre with baffling
qualities and some gift of riposte.
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