The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1887-09-03 00:00:00

CHAPTER XXIII.

WHAT CAME OF THE TRILL.

Cometh the future,
Veiled and slow.
Go forth to meet her
For weal or for woe —ANON.
IT was before a court crowded to excess that Barney
Grubb stood up to take his trial for the murder of
Francis Hatherleigh. There was no doubt now that
Frank was dead. Tiny bits of evidence had kept
cropping up from day to day, showing how he had
been seen to into the wood and had not been seen
to come out :Again. A bargeman had been found who
had heard the sounds of a scuffle and the splaeh of
something falling into water at a depth. He had been
bent on unlawful pursuits himself, or would have gone
to see what it was: he thought it was the keepers
fighting with somebody.
Other little belongings of the missing man had been
picked up by searchers, as though they had been
thrown away in the hope that the bracken and under-
growth would hide them. Altogether, the murder had
been a clumsy affair, and if perpetrated for the sake
of gain must have considerably disappointed the
assassin. It was etees.:l% ilett Frank had very little
money about him. and what could have taken him to
the wood at all was a mystery; he had said nothing
about going there to anyone,
Barney was very quiet when he was brought up,
and looked calmly around him as if he would learn
the opinion of the public from the sea of faces that
met his as he emerged from the passage below the
dock. He pleaded' Not guilty' in a firm, clear voice,
when the question was put to him, and made no
objection to any of the twelve men who were to
pronounce his doom. Mr. Jarvis was there, and
nearly all the leading people of Hillford. The case
had excited a great deal of interest from its peculiar
circumstances, and the curiosity to see Helen Ramsay
was very great. It was understood that she would
be called as a witness, and the court had been besieged
by eager folks anxious to catch a glimpse of the young
lady who had been deprived of her affianced husband
in such an awful manner.
Mr. Jarvis had seen that Barney was properly
defended, and said very little about his opinion. The
counsel for the prosecution was confident and talka-
tive. There never was a clearer case, the court would
not be kept long over it, Sze., Szc. The counsel for the
defence, a gentleman not very well known as yet in
the legal world, said very little except in conference
with Mr. Jarvis. There were witnesses for the
defence and some talk of an alibi, but the general
idea was that some ingenious line of argument would
be taken that would certainly break down.
The counsel for the prosecution made a wonderful
impression with a speech as eloquent as that of the
immortal Buzfuz ; he pictured the life of the
fatherless and motherless lad, and the wish of his dying
parents that he should marry the daughter of their
friends, and then extolled Helen's beauty and grace,
and drew pathetic sketches of the happiness of the
young couple and the grief of the bereaved bride-elect.
He was not in all the secrets of the young people, and
be little thought that he should be covered with
confusion presently, by hearing in the course of
evidence that Miss Ramsay was not abride-elect when
Mr. Hatherleigh went a-missing.
He had his witnesses all ready, and the court heard
what everyone in Hillford had heard before; how Phil
Donovan had seen Barney in the wood, and could
swear to everything he had on, and the stick he held
in his hand. Phil gave his evidence very clearly and
succintly, considering the discomfort he felt at being
in the presence of the judge at all, and drew a long
breath when he was dismissed. He had told nothing
but the simple truth, so far as he knew it, but he felt
more uncomfortable than if he had been guilty of a
legion of lies. Little by little the whole hideous
fabric of testimony was built up against Barney
Grubb, till the listeners grew sick with fear of what
the result would be. Mr. Gayford gave his evidence
without any apparent animus against the prisoner, and
told calmly how and where he had parted from his
cousin on the fatal evening ; but there was a restless
glitter in his eyes, and a look now and then at the
Immovable figure in the dock that Mr. Jarvis read
aright. It was a murderous look if ever there was
one, and the lawyer wondered what Barney could have
done to rouse such hatred in the mind of the clergy-
man.

Helen was called to testify to several minor things,
and to speak of the relations between herself and
fiank, thereby making the prosecuting counsel feel
very foolish as he thought of his wasted eloquence
about 4 the sacred bonds of love, &c., &c. It was all
as clear as daylight, the audience said, when the gen-
tleman finally sat down, saying that was his case—
with a confident air, as if nothing could be brought
forward in contradiction of his witnesses' testimony.
Barney Grubb would be hanged for certain, and
people shook themselves and took refreshments and
settled themselves down to hear the rest of the trial.
There was one witness missing that they hoped to
have heard examined—Barney's juvenile ally, Ragged
Jack.
Ali the efforts of the police to find that young
gentleman had failed; it was as if the earth had
opened and swallowed him up. After all, people re-
marked, his testimony would not have been of much
consequence. Barney acknowledged everything that
Jack had stated at the examination before the magis-
trates. He had given the boy money, which he
declared he bad received from Mr. Hatherleigh. The
inadvertently parting with the marked shilling had
led to his arrest.
It was noticed in court that the counsel for the
defence rose with rather a grave face to begin his
share of the day's proceedings, and it seemed as if the
little he had to say did nothing to advance Barney's
interests. The case lay in a nutshell, he said; it was
a matter of mistaken identity, as he would prove to
them in a very few minutes. Mr. Jarvis looked
anxious, and it seemed to the court and the lookers-
on that the learned gentleman wets wasting time
in platitudes instead of coming to the point at once.
Compared with the proceedings of the prosecution
his business was very flat indeed; surely the end of
such a matter need not be played with in such a
fashion, and his hearers began to be impati- nt. A
witness or two was called to character, and to speak
to Barney's relations with Frank Hatherleigh being
of a friendly nature, but it was hopeless work against
the mass of evidence that the other side had brought
forward. Suddenly a change took place in the manner
and bearing of the counsel. A messenger made his
way to where Mr. Jarvis sat and laid a scrap of folded
paper before him.
The prisoner had seemed to lose all hope or interest
in the proceedings with the last of the Crown witnesses,
and was leaning his head upon his hands on the edge
of the dock as if be were dispirited and hopeless. A
quick glance from the lawyer sitting there so quietly
to the couwel on his feet, and the latter announced
that he had waited till that moment for some very
imeortant information that had unaccountably boon
delayed; he proposed at once to call witnesses whose
veracity could not be doubted, and prove the most
complete altbi that had ever been established in a court
of justice.
'There was a general sensation, people rustled and
looked at one another, and Horace Gayford hid his
face in his hands to conceal the look of disappoint-
ment and dismay that flitted over his features,
Barney did not seem to catch what was being said, in
fact his thoughts were far away; he had gone into a
dream, and the steady voice going on with what
seemed to him the same thing over and over again,
and the hum of the crowd outside made one jarring
sound in his ears, that he regarded with a dull apathy
borne of the stunning shock of his arrest from which
he had not yet recovered.
'Call Esther Mordaunt.'
' The name wont echoing through the court and was
taken up and repeated outside, and the prisoner
started up and put his hands to his head.
No,' he gasped. 'No, no.'
Be was bidden to be silent, and an old woman,
neatly dressed was led into the dock and sworn. Bidden
to look at the prisoner she declared that he was her
Rea. Charles Mordaunt, and that till now she had no
1 , lea where he lived. He came to see her sometimes,
sturwas very good to her, but kept himself aloof in
,!onsequence of something that had happened some
years ago, which had preyed upon his mind and driven
' him nearly mad. Asked what it was, the old lady
'reptied with some asperity, that it had nothing to
do with the present business, and she was not forced to
speak.
i s Questicned further she declared that her Ben had
suddenly made his appearance at her house the night
before the murder in a great state of excitement, ex-
pecting to find her very ill, if not dead. He showed
her the letter that had brought him. It professed to
be writte nby a Sarah Knapp. There was a Sarah
Knapp at Bulliugham, and she knew her; but site '
could hardly write her own name, and she sass sure
the letter was not written by her; besidea she bad
eever been 111. she never was otter in her life than
she was on the day wnen her son came so suddenly.
He wauted to go back directly, but she did not know
when she might see him again, and she persuascleLd him
_ _
to stay two days with her.
. She was quite sure he was with her the night .idi the
murder. She never forgot dates, and this day was
marked with a white stone in her calendar, she E3O
, seldom saw her dear boy. Besides. the 29th of August,
the date of the crime was his birthday. She wasn't
likely to forget that when he was there with her. She
was very thankful for the hoax that brought him to
her; but she had little idea that it was ascheme to get
, him hanged. Asked how she discovered how her son
ai d Barney Grubb were one and the same, she replied,
, through the letter. He left the envelope bc-hind him,
, and When she read of the murder she put two and
slwo togeti er and guessed at the truth. She had found
-ber way to Milford though she was not accustomed
to travelling, and she had come a good past of the
diranee on toot. .
&he had her wits about her this sharp old lady, and
she looked at her son now and then with an eucourag-
ing gla-ce as if to cheer him, but Barney was deathly
write tow and looked as if he would faint. Now that
• there was a chance of his getting off scot free, lie
coel af, el what the strain on his nerves had been. His
mother's evidence rather broke down at an important
point. Asked particularly what went on on the very
night of the murder, at the time Donovan swore that
he ssw Barney in the wood, she said her son was out in
Hereford, with some old friends she believed ; but the
csunsel for the vrosecution. iu croskezeminaticat.