Waterbury evening Democrat., 1908-10-10

secOuu morning aIter ms self surrender and had pleaded not guilty. The grand jury was in session
 -indeed, had about finished it's labors
 ---and there had been no reason for de- lay. All necessary witnesses for the state were on the ground, and Fielder Tor his part had no others to summon. So that when Dr. Brent one keen fore noon swung himself of. Pullman at the station, returning from his ten days absence, he found the town thrilling with the excitement of the drst day of the trial. Before he left the station he had learned of Prendergast's death and accusation and knew that Tom Fielder had come to the prisoners defense. Dr. Brent had taken no stock In the young lawyers view of Hugh Stires.
 He betook himself to the filled court room. The court had opened two hours before and half the jury had been se- lected. His attention was given first to the bench where the prisoner sat and second to chair close to the rail- ing beside Mrs. Halloran's, where a girls face glimmered palely under light veil.
 Toward this chair the hundreds of eyes in thel room that morning had often turned. Since the day Mrs. Hal loran had surprised Jessica at work upon the rock statue she had kept her counsel; but, as the physician had con- aectured, the monument had been stum- bled upon and had drawn curious wis., ltors. Thus the name on the grave had become common property and the coin cidence had been chattered of That Jessica had chiseled the statue was not doubted. She had bought the tools in town, and old Paddy Wise, the black smith, had sharpened them for her. The story Prendergast had told in the general store, too, had not been forgot ten, and the aid she had given the fever stricken man had acquired a new significance in face of the knowledge that she had more than once been ad- mitted to the jail with Fielder. From the moment of the opening of the trial Jessica had divided interest with the prisoner.
 Circumstantially speaking the evil dence was fawless. Dr. Moreau, while little known and less liked, had figured In the town as promoter and an in- Hentor of "slick" stock schemes. He had come there with Hugh Stires from Sacramento, where they had had a business partnership of short duration. There had been bad blood between them there, as the latter had once ad- mitted. The prisoner had pre-empted the claim on Smoky mountain in an abortive "boom" which Moreau had engineered, and over whose proceeds the pair, it was believed, had fallen out. He had then, to use the attorneys phrase, "swapped the devil for the witch" and had taken up with Pren- dergast, who by the manner of his talk ing off had finally justified a jail rec ord in another state. Soon after this break Hugh Stires had vanished. On the day following his last appearance in the town the body of Moreau had been found on the Little Paymaster claim shot by cowardly bullet i through the back, a fact which pre- cluded the possibility that the deed | had been done in self defense. There | was evidence that he had died a pain ftI1 and lingering death Snsnicion had | naturally pointed to the vanished man, and this suspicion had grown until, after some months absence, he had returned, alleging that he had lost his memory of the past, to resume his life In the cabin on the mountain and his