same story as had convicted Norris: Armstrong had led a reprehensible
career, and the deliberate onslaught with a weapon after the
fight could hardly have been made by an intoxicated man. It was
vindictiveness from being worsted by the unhappy Metzgar in a fair
fight. In vain was it cited that he and Metzgar had been friends and
that the accuser was a personal enemy of the former.

The case looked so formidable--unanswerable, in short--that the State
proctor's plea for condemnation might all but be taken for granted.

However highly the prisoner had been elated by his father's friend,
his own, having promised to deliver him before sundown, he must have
lost the lift-up. For he wore the abandoned expression of one forsaken
by his own hopes as by his friends. Norris, in his cell, could have
not been more veritably the picture of despair.

Lincoln rose for the final, without eliciting any emotion from him. He
dilated on the evidence, which he asserted boldly was proof of a plot
against an innocent youth. He called the principal witness back to
the stand, and caused him definitely to repeat that he had _seen_
Armstrong strike the fatal stroke, with a slung-shot undoubtedly, and
by "the light of the moon." The proof that his accusation was false
was in the advocate's hand--the almanac, which the usher handed into
the jury, while the judge consulted one on his desk.

The whole story was a fabrication to avenge a personal enmity, and the
rock of the prosecution was blasted by the defense's fiery eloquence.

The arbiters went out for half an hour, but the audience, waiting in
breathless impatience, discounted the result. The twelve filed in to