The Elbert County tribune., 1907-06-20
WHAT IS PROVEN?
ONE CORRESPONDENT SAYS Or
cHARo PROVED NOTHING.
wARRING FOR AHUMAK SOUL
The Vivid coioring Of Saul in Awful
Travail Shown in Orchards
Confession.

OTCndFu mas gone, ana now we kuoW
that we have not been dreaming.
Orchard has come and Orchard has
gone. and since his going we have
been building in grain by grain. atom
by atom. as coral insects build in the
southern seas, the white walls OF fact
which are to fill in the steel frame Of
evidence his incredible story riveted
beam to beam to breastwork.
| Orchard has come and Orchard has
gone. and he went as he came that
breathless morning a week ago,
small. short, thick-set, inscrutable man
in gray tweed suit, looking right be-
| fore him with fathomless, fearless,
wide-set eyes, believing as he said, in
the Everlasting God, and thinking. also
as he said. that life here might be sold
well and cheaply if it brought indem-
nifty throughout eternity.
He told his tale to Hawley. briefly
and without gestures. and it drained
into our ears as a dream might; a
dream of prodigious inhuman impossi-
bility. He told his tale again to Rich
ardson, the ponderous and patient and
particular Richardson, and 10! 1t was
a dream no more, but biting. vivid.
poignant story of fathomless sin and
black murder; and we knew that we
were watching the first fires of hell.
Defense Was SkepticsI.
Before Orchard came the defense
told us that he never would say on the
stand what he had said TO MCFARLAND.
He was mad, they said, or half mad,
or diseased. They doubted whether he
had ever killed Steunenberg. They de-
MED that he has ever even tried to kill
Bradley in San Francisco. They went
further and said that he had never
even been in San Francisco.
They laughed at the story that he
had ever blown up the Independence
depot.
They did not know he was going to
charge himself with the murder of
/ Lyte Gregory. They sneered at the
attempted assassination of Goddard
and Gabbert and Peabody and Sherman
Bell.
They said he was a degenerate, a
craven, covering fugitive. with no
heart for any fight and no faith in any
God.
They predicted immediate and final
annihilation of MCFARLAND. They said
Mcfarland had grown old and foolish.
gibbering of vain things, mouthing Of
his past.
They were prepared to sweep away
the whole case of the state in less than
twenty-four hours. They were pre-
pared to prove that the whole thing
was foolish and vain and wicked CON
spiracy. They were prepared for any
thing. They were prepared for every
thing.
But they were not prepared for Or.
chard, the man who said he believed
in a life after death and wanted to
make his peace with God and wanted
to tell the truth. He was for them a
problem in the fourth dimension. and
they left him quite unsolved. And so
did we.
He admitted arson: he admitted big
amy; he admitted murder; he admitted
burglary; he admitted assassinations
attempted and assassinations accom-
plished; he admitted lying; he admit
ted poisoning; he was vague as to the
mere dates of his offending, but scrupu-
lous to point as to the verbiage of his
confession. He evaded no crime
charged against him. He charged him
self with many that were not supposed.
He made not one solitary statement In
his evidence in chief that was smirched
in the least by the labored cross-exam-
ination of Richardson, and the story of
his last wanderings before he did his
last killing had some touch of final
human tragedy in it: the passing cry
of human soul.
Richardson drew it from him clums-
lily, drip by drip, word by word, episode
by episode. But it seemed somehow
to eclipse the court room and darken
the world. and left only the vague,
moving picture of two shadows trail
ing each other OBVIOUSLY through the
night, until In the end one smote and
the other fell and was left writhing,
and Orchard sat in that chair again
answering monotonously, "Yes, sir"
or mo. sir, ] did not say that exactly
What | said was" 1t was all out OF
focus. unbelievable. And the man had
admitted again and again that he was
a liar.
1t was wonderfully graphic, dra-
matte. blood freezing; a story to listen
to with parted lips, breathless.
And yet it wasn't evidence
II proved nothing; It did not even
prove that Orchard killed Steunenberg.
Not even that. There has been evil
dence that bomb killed him. But
| there has been no evidence-not at all
that Orchard even placed that bomb:
no evidence other than Orchards own
statement
1t has been the same with the blow
ing up of the Vindicator mine, and the
blowing up of the Independence depot
and the killing of Lyte Gregory, and
the attempt on the life of Bradley. So
far we have come nearer to bringing
the Bradley affair home to Orchard
than any OF the others. 1t is a preg-
nant situation. And it must be remem-
bered that Orchard is not on trial here
1t Is William d. Haywood. And against
Haywood so far no evidence has been
produced that any system OF jurispru-
dence will accept as connecting him
with the Steunenberg murder. 1t would
be taken as evidence ~ no law. Ro-
man or English or Dutch.
L To- AriIiia... N