He had witnessed the pursuit, he had heard the
conversation which took place between the boat and the ship; he had
given Will a homeward passage in his boat. And the character of an
accredited pilot, appointed by the Trinity House, was known to be
above suspicion.
Mr. Carson sank back on his seat in sickening despair. He knew
enough of courts to be aware of the extreme unwillingness of juries
to convict, even where the evidence is most clear, when the penalty
of such conviction is death. At the period of the trial most
condemnatory to the prisoner, he had repeated this fact to himself,
in order to damp his too certain expectation for a conviction. Now
it needed not repetition, for it forced itself upon his
consciousness, and he seemed to KNOW, even before the jury retired
to consult, that by some trick, some negligence, some miserable
hocus-pocus, the murderer of his child, his darling, his Absalom,
who had never rebelled--the slayer of his unburied boy would slip
through the fangs of justice, and walk free and unscathed over that
earth where his son would never more be seen.
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