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Hunted

Chapter IX. The Escape

Chapter IX. The Escape.

A suppressed murmur passed over the Court as the fatal words were faintly heard, which was succeeded by a stillness like the silence of death. Every eye was turned to the prisoner at the bar, who had raised himself to his full height and was looking straight at the Bench. Then his eyes turned to the little group with a look of yearning tenderness. Mrs Dillon was leaning forward in her place with her hands over her face, while little Elsie's eyes were fixed on her father with a bewildered look as if she knew nothing of the nature of the proceedings.

At last the silence was broken by the words ‘Prisoner, have you anything to say why sentence of death should not be passed on you?’

There was a pause in which not a whisper disturbed the awful stillness of the court. Dillon slowly raised his left hand and placed it over his eyes as if to collect his wandering thoughts. The judge bent forward, pen in hand, apparently absorbed in the notes before him; and in the painful silence that succeeded, men almost heard the beating of their own hearts. At last the prisoner removed his hand from his brow and raised himself erect.

‘My Lord, I am innocent. Before God, I swear I am innocent. In His presence I will soon stand, but to my last breath I will declare before Heaven and earth that neither in sympathy nor act had I anything to do with the murder of Captain Lewis. I thank you, my Lord, and I thank the jury for the patience and fairness with which you have conducted the trial. I do not blame you. With the evidence which has been laid before you, I can hardly wonder that you have come to this verdict. It so involved me that, with my own mouth closed and no evidence that I could bring in explanation, I could myself see little chance of escape. You have done your duty, and when the hour comes, as I am sure it will yet come, when my name will be cleared from this foul crime, I wish it to be remembered that I freely forgave you for the part you have had in my death.

‘I had no ill-will against Captain Lewis. In a moment of excitement I denounced his conduct. I did not threaten him, nor did a thought of doing injury to him ever enter my head; and I had not passed from his presence for two minutes till I regretted the excitement of my words. My counsel, whom I thank for his able and earnest efforts in my behalf, has explained to you the cause of my visit to London. Every word of what he has said is true, and I feel assured that the time will yet come when you will find it so. It was my only hope of saving my farm, to see Lord Errington. It was a forlorn hope at the best and we had to make a great effort to do so. I was sitting on Knockmore hill when I saw, miles away, in the darkness, the flash, and heard the report, of the gun with which, I have no doubt, the unhappy gentleman was slain. That was the only connection I had with the melaucholy event. I can hardly expect youto believe me, butyou will know the truthfulness of my words when I am gone. It was only when I was in London that I learned to my horror that I was suspected of the crime. As my counsel has truthfully said, if I had been guilty I could then have easily escaped from the law. But I did not hesitate a moment. I did not waste an hour, but hastened to return by the quickest possible means, to face the charge. I had reached my home. I wished to see and to comfort my dear wife, intending to go the same night to town and give myself up to the police. I had not been in the house for half an hour when my intention was anticipated, and I was arrested; and I have come before you for trial, with the additional suspicion of having been apprehended as a culprit. My Lord, it is in no spirit of bravado that I say I am not afraid to die. For myself I would not grieve to die; but I own that I do grieve for others who are very dear to me. The ignominy of such a death will not continue. My name will be cleared, and when the time comes I ask that society make reparation to my loved ones for the wrong it has done them. If I had been ever so much impelled by madness to commit such a wicked and foolish crime, my love for these would have kept me from it, and what grieves me most is to be compelled to leave them at the time when they most require my protection.

‘Oh, when I think of this crushing blow to them, the shame and disgrace that will press them down when they have no help and no friends, it almost drives me to madness. Without friends, without means, and crushed with the contempt of society, they must now go forth and battle with the world alone. Oh, it is a bitter thing to die. Oh God, why is this ? why should I have to die for a crime I have never done ? Why should my poor page 21 wife and children have to bear this heavy burthen? Is there no justice in Heaven? Is there no mercy, is there no help, in either heaven or earth? Oh, this drives me to madness; it cannot, it must not be. I cannot, I will not die!’

With this impassioned utterance he raised his hands and his eyes to heaven. ‘Oh God, he cried, ‘help me, oh, God, save me!’

He placed his hands on the front of the dock; with a bound he cleared the enclosure; he sprang over the benches, there was a crash of glass, and he was gone.

For a moment the whole court was paralysed at the suddennes of the scene. Then every man sprang to his feet, there was a wild yell of satisfaction from the crowd behind. Hurried orders were shouted, the police rushed to the window, but no one ventured to take the plunge into the alley below. There was a rush of the police to the doors, which were jammed by the crowd; there was hurrying hither and thither; the judge arose majestically from his seat, and standing, viewed the confused and struggling throng as if his presence should have awed it into order, while the screams of women and the shouts of men being trampled under foot added to the wildness of the scene. At last the police made good their exit from the building, and the hue and cry of pursuit died away in the distance.

Order in the building was soon restored, and it was observed that a woman had fallen to the floor in one of the side seats, a little girl weeping passionately over her. The court had been rapidly cleared, and the excitement of the past few moments among those remaining was turned into sympathy with the little scene of domestic distress, and the officers of the court vied with one another in soothing the sobbing of the child, and seeking by restoratives to bring back the mother to consciousness. Mrs Dillon had listened to the impassioned address of her husband; she had heard his appeal to Heaven for mercy. She had seen him bound from the dock and disappear, her nervous system had reached its utmost tension, the reaction came, and she had fallen unconscious to the floor. Gentle hands raised her tenderly, and bore her to the floor of the open court; even the judge, abruptly as the discharge of his duty had been interrupted, was touched by the scene, and while directing that she should be carried to the fresh air of an adjoining room, gently tried to soothe the passionate sobbings of the child. Taking Elsie by her hand, he led her along to where her mother was being carried and laid. By the aid of restoratives, Mrs Dillon soon recovered consciousness.

‘Oh. where am I! What has happened?’ she passionately exclaimed, as she began to recall the incidents that had occurred.

‘Compose yourself, madam,’ replied the judge, ‘your feelings have overcome you, but you will soon be quite well again.’

‘Oh, where is my husband, where is my husband? Has he escaped?

‘Well, madam, I—I believe he has, but—–

He was going to add that the police would soon have him again, but he suddenly thought that in the circumstances it would be better left unsaid.

‘Oh, Sir, he is innocent: he is innocent. My husband never could have committed that dreadful crime. Oh, Sir, spare him: spare him; he is not guilty.’

‘Pray, madam, do compose yourself. You must not let your feelings overcome you in that way. Your husband is in no immediate danger, and if you permit your feelings to carry you away you will be very ill.’

Elsie threw her arms around her mother's neck and sobbed as if her little heart would break; while the court officials stood around, nor could all their sense of regard for law, and annoyance at the sudden escape of the prisoner, prevent them from being touched by the distress of his wife and child.

‘Did my husband escape?’ asked Mrs Dillon with calmness, when she realised the fact that it was the judge himself in whose presence she was.

‘Yes, Madam,’ replied his Lordship, ‘he has escaped from the court, but it is my duty to say that of course it will be our painful duty to have him arrested again.’

‘Oh, Willie, Willie, my poor dear Willie, hunted, hunted like a wild beast,’ and she broke down again in a fit of sobbing.

From his inmost heart the judge would like to have said there was a chance that he might not be arrested, for clear as the evidence had been, he felt that there was a link in the chain wanting, and that purely circumstantial as it was, there was still a possibility that the explanation of the prisoner may have been true. But he knew that no recommendation for a reprieve or a reconsideration of the case could be made so long as the prisoner was at large. He saw too the impropriety of holding out any possibly delusive hopes either as to the possibility of the prisoner evading pursuit, or his case being submitted to the prerogative of mercy in the Crown. The awkwardness of the situation was embarrassing, and after some further words of kindness in the endeavour to soothe the agitation of the afflicted woman, he recommended her to go to her home, and seek to calmly resign herself to whatever Providence might be pleased to have in store for her.

When Mrs Dillon, holding her little Elsie by the hand, went out into the cold, bleak night, the full force of her desolation came over her mind. The snow was falling heavily; there were few people abroad; and as she wearily trudged along the silent streets, her little girl by her side, she realised the dreary hopelessness of her position. She had come page 22 into town in the morning in the confidence that she would return accompanied by her dear husband honourably acquitted of the foul crime with which he had been charged. Where was her husband now? found guilty, and with the sentence of death hanging over him, flying desperately from the hands of the law. She knew how little chance there was of his escape with the county filled with police, who every night patrolled the country roads, and whose vigilance would now be tenfold increased by the fact of a condemned murderer being abroad. To what straits her poor husband would be reduced in his wild flight from the gallows she could hardly allow herself to think, and in her distress she sent up an agonised plea to heaven to spare her husband, and save him from suffering and from a painful and disgraceful death.

Little Elsie walked in silence by her side. The day's proceedings had added years to her intelligence, and though the poor child could not fully realise all that had occurred, she had seen her father's desperate effort to escape, and knew that there must be something very dreadful behind. So her child wisdom prompted her to not put any question to her mother although she would have given worlds to know where her father had gone, and whether he would be waiting for them when they got home.

Wearily Mrs Dillon found her way to the inn at the farther end of the town where she had been set down in the morning from the conveyance in which some of her humble farming neighbours had given her a lift to town. She found them waiting for her, and anxiously wondering what had become of her after the exciting incidents of her husband's escape, the news of which had spread like wildfire through the town. She received a gentle and kindly welcome, the thoughtfulness and good taste of her friends preventing them from making any allusion to what had happened.

Once only during the journey home was the escape referred to. Little conversation had passed, and that of a general and indifferent kind, but the continuance and extraordinary density of the snowfall suggested to Mrs Dillon to break the silence by saying how heavily the snow was falling. ‘Yes, thank God,’ said the farmer. Mrs Dillon suspected what he meant, and clutching at anything that would give her a little hope, she asked why he thanked God for the heavy snow. ‘It will hide the tracks of a man,’ he said, ‘if he does not want to be followed.’

‘Phillips,’ said Mrs Dillon, ‘do you think there is any chance of his escape?’

‘Yes, a thousand chances, if it pleases God he'll niver be found by all the policemen in the county.’

‘But where could he be concealed, Phillips?’

‘Niver you fear, Mrs Dillon; the boys will hide him where divil a peeler will come near him.’

‘Mamma,’ and Elsie, ‘is father not at home now?’

No one replied to this, but Mrs Phillips uttered an ejaculation of pity and distress.

‘God bless the child,’ said Phillips gently.

‘No, Elsie,’ said Mrs Dillon, ‘father is not at home. You will not see your father for some time.’

The child lapsed into silence but shortly a soft sob revealed that her poor little breaking heart was realising the true state of affairs. And when the Phillips set them down at the foot of the lane, and Mrs Dillon, taking Elsie by the hand, entered the lonely house, and had sent away the kind-hearted neighbour woman that had taken charge of the other children in her absence, and mother and child were alone, Elsie asked no more questions about her father. But when in her little nightgown, the child knelt beside her cot and spread out her little tale in prayer, it may be that, more than litanies rolling up from cathedral aisles and dying away in fretted domes, the still small voice of the little broken heart reached the ear of the Father of all, and ministering angels may have sped away that night to hover over the hiding place of the lonely fugitive.