Why should he be called upon to do this thing--why, _why_?
The question was a wild cry within his breast, lunging like a wolf in a leash to burst his lips. His mother drew a step nearer, unstayed by the sheriff, unchecked by the judge. She spread her poor hands in supplication; the tears coursed down her brown old cheeks.
"Oh, my son, my son--my little son!" she said.
He saw her dimly now, for tears answered her tears. All was silent in that room, the silence of the forest before the hurricane grasps it and bends it, and the lightnings reave its limbs.
"Mother," said he chokingly, "I--I don't know what to do!"
"Tell it all, Joe!" she pleaded. "Oh, tell it all--tell it all!"
Her voice was little louder than a whisper, yet it was heard by every mother in that room. It struck down into their hearts with a sharp, riving stab of sympathy, which nothing but sobs would relieve.
Men clamped their teeth and gazed straight ahead at the moving scene, unashamed of the tears which rolled across their cheeks and threaded down their beards; the prosecutor, leaning on his hands, bent forward and waited.
Joe's mind was in a tornado. The débris of past resolutions was flung high, and swirled and dashed in a wild tumult. There was nothing tangible in his reasoning, nothing plain in his sight. A mist was before his eyes, a fog was over his reason. Only there was mother, with those soul-born tears upon her face. It seemed to him then that his first and his most sacred duty was to her.
The seconds were as hours. The low moaning of women sounded in the room. Somebody moved a foot, scraping it in rude dissonance across the floor. A girl's voice broke out in sudden sobbing, which was as quickly stifled, with sharp catching of the breath.
Judge Maxwell moved in his chair, turning slowly toward the witness, and silence fell.
They were waiting; they were straining against his doubts and his weakening resolution of past days, with the concentration of half a thousand minds.
A moment of joy is a drop of honey on the tongue; a moment of pain is bitterer than any essence that Ignatius ever distilled from his evil bean. The one is as transitory as a smile; the other as lingering as a broken bone.
Joe had hung in the balance but a matter of seconds, but it seemed to him a day. Now he lifted his slim, white hand and covered his eyes. They were waiting for the word out there, those uplifted, eager faces; the judge waited, the jury waited, mother waited. They were wringing it from him, and honor's voice was dim in its counsel now, and far away.