She knew it, she said; and there the matter dropped. And she knew
quite equally, in her own firm mind, that Gilbert Gildersleeve was
the real murderer.
Gilbert Gildersleeve, meanwhile, had gone up a step or two higher
in the social scale. He had been promoted to the bench on the
first vacancy, as all the world had long expected; but, strange
to say, he took it far more modestly than all the world had ever
anticipated. Indeed, before he was made a judge, everybody said
he'd be intolerable in the ermine. He was blustering and bullying
enough, in all conscience, as a mere Queen's Counsel; but when he
came to preside in a court of his own, his insolence would surpass
even the wonted insolence of our autocratic British justices. In
this, however, everybody was mistaken.
A curious change had of late come over Gilbert Gildersleeve. The
big, bullying lawyer was growing nervous and diffident, where of
old he had been coarse and self-assertive and blustering. He was
beginning at times almost to doubt his own absolute omniscience and
absolute wisdom. He was prepared half to admit that under certain
circumstances a prisoner might possibly be in the right, and that
all crimes alike did not necessarily deserve the hardest sentence
the law of the land allowed him to allot them.
Pages:
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333