For the first few minutes after they entered the jury-room,
not a word was spoken; they sate around the square table,
which just held twelve, with their heads toward the centre,
watching each other's faces sharply for the first glimpse
of a verdict.

A spider's thread fell from the ceiling and hung dangling
above the table, bearing a fly struggling at its end.

“Guilty or not guilty, gentlemen?” said the foreman, a
close-shaven, blue-faced man, with glittering eyes, glancing
round the board as he put the question, by way of
breaking ground.

“Guilty, for one,” answered a fat citizen on his right
hand, sweeping the struggling fly into his hat which he
produced suddenly from behind his chair. “We must
have an example, gentlemen. The last three capital indictments
got off, and now it's the sheriff's turn for a pull.
We must have an example.”

[figure description] Page 284.[end figure description]

“Three for breeders and the fourth to the bull-ring,”
spoke up a gentleman with a deep chest and brawny
arms. “That's the rule at the slaughter-house. We always
follow it—and so I say guilty, if the rest's agreeable.”

But the rest were not agreeable, and they launched
into an elaborate and comprehensive discussion of the
case, led on by a high-cheeked gentleman in a white-neck-cloth,
who begged to ask whether any one there was prepared
to say whether angels could, under any circumstances,
become rag-pickers? That was the gist of the
case. There might be angels of fire—he had heard an
excellent discourse on that subject in the Brick church—
and that would account for the prisoner's burning the
buildings. He had been rather pleased with the district
attorney's calling Fyler Close the demon of that element;
but then would it be in character for a demon to go about
with a basket and a hooked stick? He couldn't see into
it just yet—he would like to hear the opinion of the other
gentlemen of the jury on that point.

“It is n't always easy to tell them insane chaps at first
sight,” pursued another, a short juror, who, resting his
elbows upon the table, looked out from between them
with flat face and saucer eyes, fading far away in his head,
like the hero of a country sign-board. “There was one
of 'em got into our house in Orchard-street one day, and
when he was caught, he was at work on a stun' lemon
with his teeth like vengeance. Now, that was insanity at
first view, but when we come to find his pockets full of
silver-spoons and table-knives, that was compos mentis and
the light of reason.”

“How many stun' lemons would you have a feller eat,
I'd like to know,” retorted the deep-chested member, “to
make it out a reg'lar case?”

“One full-grown 'd satisfy me,” answered the sign-board,
“other gentlemen might require more.”

The Board was unanimous on this point, one would be
enough.

“I'd have you take notice of one thing, gentlemen,”
said a thin little man, starting in at this moment from a
corner of the table, with a nose like a tack, and eyes like
a couple of small gimlet-holes. “There was a point in the

[figure description] Page 285.[end figure description]

testimony of that Sloat—the police-officer—that's very
important, and what's better, it escaped the district attorney,
and the prisoner's counsel, and the very judge on the
bench. Now, I want your attention, gentlemen. You will
recollect that Sloat testifies to a man in a grey over-coat
going into an alley in Scammel-street, and getting into the
basement of Close's Row. That was the incendiary, no
one doubts that. Very good. And then Sloat goes a
little further, and says he was gone long enough to play
a couple of games of dominoes; and when he gets back,
he says, a man went by the alley—mark that—went by
the alley and down Scammel-street. That wasn't the incendiary,
was it? By no means, gentlemen; where was
he then all this time? I'll tell you”—he drew his breath
hard, and turned quite pale as he looked around. “It's
my opinion, gentlemen, the incendiary was roasted alive
in the basement of them buildings.”

There was a shudder through the jury-room: the jurors
turned about to each other, and said, “Who would have
thought of that?” and it was admitted on all hands to be
a very plausible and acute conjecture and well-worthy of
the gentleman in the eyelets and tack-shaped nose.

“It can't be,” said the fat citizen, balancing his hat in
his two hands, and looking sternly at the fly in the bottom
of the crown. “If you could only make that out, we
might let this prisoner at the bar off. I can't believe he
was so nicely caught. No, no—if that had been the case,
somebody would have found the bones done brown and a
pair of shoe-buckles. Don't give way, I beg you, gentlemen,
to the pleasing illusion.”

And so saying, he knocked his hat upon his head and
smothered the fly.

“I have great faith in that China-ware witness,” said the
gentleman in the sign-board face. “He was right in that
observation of his: a man out of his wits always talks to
people a couple o' hundred miles off and whistles for a invisible
dog. I had a cousin, gentlemen of the jury, that
went mad as he was coming through this ere Park one day;
he was a boat-captain, and was a comin' from his sloop, and
he asked the Liberty-Goddess, a top of the hall, to take
snuff with him. On re-considerin', I think Fyler Close's is
a case of lunat-ics.”

[figure description] Page 286.[end figure description]

Two or three other jurors thought as much.

“That mug of beer satisfied me,” said one.

“Would he ha' sp'ilt a new hat that his counsel had
bought to give him a respectable first appearance in court
with do ye think, Bill,” said another, appealing to the
last speaker, “If his head hadn't a been turned clean round.
It's a gone nine-pin, that head o' his?”

“Now, gentlemen of the jury, you must excuse me a
few minutes, if you please,” said a stout, rugged, hard-headed
gentleman, with heavy eye-brows, rising at one
end of the table, and thrusting back his skirts with both
hands. “This is a great moral question, whether the prisoner
shall be hung or not. Am I right?” “You are!”
“You are!” from several voices at the upper end of the
table. “A great moral question, I say: and its owing to
a great moral accident that I am with you this day, for if
if I hadn't eaten too many tom-cods for my supper last night,
I should have been off in the seven o'clock boat this morning,
to the anniversary of the Moral Reform at Philadelphia.
Now the community looks to us for action in this
case. If this man escapes, who can be hung? Where's
the safety for life and property if we can't hang a man
now and then? Hanging's the moral lever of the world,
and when the world's grown rotten by laying too much on
one side, why, we hang a man and all comes right again.
If we don't hang Fyler Close he'll hang us—morally, I
mean.”

This was a director in a fire company, who had smuggled
himself upon the jury, by giving out that he was a
gentleman, and blinded Fyler's counsel, by hinting that he
was doubtful of the policy of hanging; what he said produced
a sensation in the jury-room. The twelve judges
began to put it to themselves, some of them, whether premiums
wouldn't go up if this house-burner escaped;
others, that New-York might be burned to a cinder if this
was'nt put a stop to somehow or other (There had been
a brilliant and well-sustained series of fires for better than
a twelve-month;) and others, that as he had failed to turn
his insanity to the best account by hanging himself, they
would take it off his hands and attend to it—as he was a
decrepid old gentleman—for him.

“Pardon me, gentlemen,” said the foreman at this stage

[figure description] Page 287.[end figure description]

of feeling; “I think this is a clear case for the sheriff.
The prisoner is an old man; he has no friends—not a relation
in the world, one of the witnesses said; he's lost
his property—and as for his wits, you see what they're
worth. Now the next candidate that comes along may
be a fine black-haired, rosy young fellow, who may have
tickled a man with a sword-cane, or something of that
sort, with a number of interesting sisters, an aged mother,
and a crowd of afflicted connexions. You see what a
plight we would be in if we should happen to be drawn
on that jury. Are you agreed, gentlemen?”

There was not a little laying of heads together; discussion
in couples, triplets, and quadruplets; and in the
course of two hours more they were agreed, and rose to
call the officer to marshal them into court.

“Stop a minute, gentlemen, if you please,” said the
fat citizen; “this is a capital case, you will recollect—
and it wouldn't be decent to go in under five hours.”

“He's right,” said the foreman; “and you may do
what you choose for an hour.”

Two of the jury withdrew to a bench at the side of the
room, where, standing close to the wall, one of them planting
his foot upon the bench, and bending forward, entered
upon a whispered interview. Two more remained at the
table; while the others grouped themselves in a window
looking forth upon the Park at the rear of the hall, and amused
themselves by watching a crowd that had gathered there,
under a lamp, and who began making signs and motions to
them as soon as they showed themselves. The most constant
occupation of the crowd seemed to be passing a finger
about the neck and then jerking it up as though pulling at
a string, with a clicking sound, which, when once or twice
they lifted the window, and as it seemed the most popular
and prevailing sound, could be distinctly heard.

“This is the luckiest thing that could have happened
in the world,” said one of the two jurors that had taken
to the wall—the gentleman in the sharp nose and weazel-eyes—
addressing himself to the deep-chested juror with
brawny arms, who was the other; “I wanted to speak to
you about that black-spotted heifer, and this is just the
chance.”

“You couldn't speak on a more agreeable subject,”

[figure description] Page 288.[end figure description]

retorted the deep-chested gentleman; “but you mustn't
expect me to take off the filing of a copper from the price;
what I asks at Bull's Head this morning, I asks now.”

“I know your way,” rejoined the other; “you never
come down even the value of a glass of beer to bind
the bargain; but it wasn't that—what grass was she
fatted on?”

“Short blue,” answered the deep-chested gentleman,
firmly.

“Any salt meadow near?” asked the other.

“Not more than twenty acres,” responded the deep-chested
juror, with the air of a gentleman carrying all
before him; “and swimmin' a healthy run o' water a
rod wide give the critter a belly-full any time.”

“Two years old the next full-moon?—and a cross of
the Durham in her, I think?”

“Not a cross of the Durham, I tell you,” answered the
deep-chested gentleman, raising his voice a little, “but
the Westchester bottom, and hasn't known a dry day,
nor a parched blade, since she was calved.”

“No Durham blood? I'm sorry for that,” said the
sharp-nosed gentleman; “If you could throw me in that
lamb I took a fancy to, we would close.”

“Throw you in the lamb? That's a good one,” cried
the deep-chested gentleman, bursting into a laugh of scorn.
“Why, I wouldn't throw you in the singeing of that lamb's
wool. Only five and twenty for the prettiest heifer that
ever hoofed it down the Third Avenue—and throw you in
a lamb! That is a good one!” And he burst into another
scornful laugh.

“Well, well,” said the sharp-nosed gentleman, soothing
him with a prompt compliance. “Drive her down to my
stable as soon as the verdict's in.”—

Meanwhile the two that remained at the table were employed.

“Have you got that ere box in your pocket, Bill?” said
one of them, a personage with a smoth clean face, from
which all the blood would seem to have been dried by
the blazing gas-lights under which he was accustomed to
spend his time.

“To be sure I have,” answered the other, a gentleman
of a similar cast of countenance, but a trifle stouter. “Did

[figure description] Page 289.[end figure description]

you ever catch Slickey Bill a-travelling without his
tools?” He produced a well-worn dice-box from his
coat, and began rattling. “What shall it be?”

“The highest cast, `guilty,' ” said the other, “and three
blanks shall let him go clear. That 'll do—wont it?”

“Jist as good as the best. It's your first throw.”

The other took the box in hand, gave it a hoarse, rumbling
shake—three fours. The other shook it sharply—
two blanks.

“Guilty by —,” they both said together.

They then indulged themselves with a variety of fancy
throws, as to the state of the weather—the winning-horse
at the next Beacon course—whether the recorder (a gentleman
in whom they felt a special interest,) would die
first or be turned off the bench by the Legislature. Every
now and then they came back to the case of the prisoner,
and—what was singular—the result was always the same.

The Hall-clock struck three—the legitimate five hours
were up—and the jurors gathered again around the table.

“Gentlemen, are we agreed?” asked the foreman.

“We are!” answered the jury.

“Yes, and what's queer, we've been trying it with
dice, and every time it's turned out three twelves agin
the prisoner; so the result's right, any way you can fix
it—isn't it so, Bill?”

“Exactly!” answered the gentleman appealed to.
The officer was summoned, and putting himself at their
head, they marched into the court-room with the air of
men who deserved well of the newspapers for their moral
firmness; and who, at the sacrifice of their own feelings,
were rendering a great service to the community.

The court-room was nearly a blank. The judge and
the two aldermen had waited with exemplary patience
the deliberations of the jury, and were now in their places
to hear the result. Fyler's counsel, with a clerk, was
there also; and the district attorney, the clerk of the court,
and two or three officers and underlings, loitering about.
The prisoner himself sate at his table, a little pale, it
seemed in the uncertain light, but unmoved.

The crowd of spectators had dwindled as the clock struck
ten—eleven—twelve. Mr. Ishmael Small, after tarrying
an hour or two, had gone out with the others, and

[figure description] Page 290.[end figure description]

disposed of his leisure in playing a new game of ball, of his
own devising, in the west side of the Park, with a crew
of printer's boys from the neighboring offices.

In the whole outer court-room, there was but a single
spectator, the little old man that had been the first at the
Hall-gates in the morning, who looked on, leaning against
a remote column, at the judges, who, from that distance,
seemed, in the dusky shade of the unsnuffed candles standing
about them, like spectres, gradually fading into the red
curtain that hung at their back.

“Mr. Clerk, call the jury!” said the chief judge in a
voice, which great usage on the trial and the incidents
of the place made to sound sepulchral.

The jury was called, man by man.

“Arraign the prisoner!” in the same unearthly and
startling voice.

The prisoner was arraigned.

“What say you, gentlemen of the jury—Guilty or Not
Guilty?”

“Guilty!”

Fyler started for a moment, but instantly recovering
himself, smiled vacantly upon the judge and jury, and began
whistling, as described by the crockery-dealer. The
little old man clasped his hands firmly together, and
breathed an earnest thanksgiving from the dusky corner
where he stood alone. In a few minutes it got abroad that
the prisoner was convicted—a shout shook the air without,
and presently a crowd rushed in that filled the Hall
afresh. The prisoner was to be taken out by the private
way, but the little old man was not to be cheated this
time. He had urged himself through the press, and
stood against the lintel of the door through which he must
pass. In a few minutes he came along—when Fyler saw
who it was that watched his steps, he glared upon him.
Hobbleshank gazed after him as he passed away to his
doom, with a look of unrevengeful triumph.

p264-302

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