"No, sir."
"But it was very early; how did you know that?"
"It was a long time before we had any breakfast."
"And what time did you have breakfast?"
"Half past six by the kitchen clock."
"Was it light when you woke up?"
"Yes, sir."
"When Father got up, did he dress or did he go to bed again?"
"He hadn't never undressed, sir."
"Then did he stay with you or did he go out?"
"Out, sir."
"And how long was it before he came back?"
"When I was puttin' on Billy's boots."
"What had you done in between?"
"Helped Susie and dressed Billy."
"And how long does that take you generally?"
"Half an hour, sir."
"I see. What did Father look like when he came in, Biddy?"
The mother-child paused. For the first time it seemed to dawn on her that there was something dangerous in these questions. She twisted her small hands before her and gazed at her father.
The judge said gently:
"Well, my child?"
"Like he does now, sir."
"Thank you, Biddy."
That was all; the mother-child was suffered to step down and take her place again by Tod. And in the silence rose the short and rubbery report of little Mr. Pogram blowing his nose. No evidence given that morning was so conclusive, actual, terrible as that unconscious: "Like he does now, sir." That was why even Justice quailed a little at its own probings.
From this moment the boy knew that Tryst's fate was sealed. What did all those words matter, those professional patterings one way and the other; the professional jeers: 'My friend has told you this' and 'My friend will tell you that.' The professional steering of the impartial judge, seated there above them all; the cold, calculated rhapsodies about the heinousness of arson; the cold and calculated attack on the characters of the stone-breaker witness and the tramp witness; the cold and calculated patter of the appeal not to condemn a father on the evidence of his little child; the cold and calculated outburst on the right of every man to be assumed innocent except on overwhelming evidence such as did not here exist. The cold and calculated balancing of pro and con; and those minutes of cold calculation veiled from the eyes of the court. Even the verdict: 'Guilty'; even the judgment: 'Three years' penal servitude.' All nothing, all superfluity to the boy supporting the tragic gaze of Tryst's eyes and making up his mind to a desperate resort.
"Three years' penal servitude!" The big laborer paid no more attention to those words than to any others spoken during that hour's settlement of his fate. True, he received them standing, as is the custom, fronting the image of Justice, from whose lips they came. But by no single gesture did he let any one see the dumb depths of his soul. If life had taught him nothing else, it had taught him never to express himself. Mute as any bullock led into the slaughtering-house, with something of a bullock's dulled and helpless fear in his eyes, he passed down and away between his jailers. And at once the professional noises rose, and the professional rhapsodists, hunching their gowns, swept that little lot of papers into their pink tape, and, turning to their neighbors, smiled, and talked, and jerked their eyebrows.