Will's appearance had only
added to the intensity of this suspense.
The full meaning of the verdict could not at once penetrate his
brain. He stood dizzy and motionless. Some one pulled his coat.
He turned, and saw Job Legh, the tears stealing down his brown
furrowed cheeks, while he tried in vain to command voice enough to
speak. He kept shaking Jem by the hand, as the best and necessary
expression of his feeling.
"Here, make yourself scarce! I should think you'd be glad to get
out of that!" exclaimed the gaoler, as he brought up another livid
prisoner, from out whose eyes came the anxiety which he would not
allow any other feature to display.
Job Legh pressed out of court, and Jem followed unreasoningly.
The crowd made way, and kept their garments tight about them, as Jem
passed, for about him there still hung the taint of the murderer.
He was in the open air, and free once more! Although many looked on
him with suspicion, faithful friends closed round him; his arm was
unresistingly pumped up and down by his cousin and Job; when one was
tired, the other took up the wholesome exercise, while Ben Sturgis
was working off his interest in the scene by scolding Charley for
walking on his head round and round Mary's sweetheart, for a
sweetheart he was now satisfactorily ascertained to be, in spite of
her assertion to the contrary.
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