d
with the help of the court and the jury, it would be enforced; and his
client who had been greatly wronged and barely escaped with his life
would be freed, and could go back to his family, and be a respected
member of the community.

Then after takin' up the case about the threats and everything, he began
on Mitch.

"Think of it, gentlemen," he said, "here is a boy who waits until the
case is closed, and we have a right to think that all they can bring
against my client has been brought, and then this boy turns up to swear
away his life. Let us be charitable, but let us be just. I must do my
duty and to do it, I must speak. Here is a boy who confesses that he
never told a word about what he saw until yesterday. He confesses that
he kept it to himself in order that he might hunt treasure and run away
from the orders of this court; he confesses that he has deceived his
father, that he has been truant and bad. Yes, and above all, gentlemen,
he confesses he has dreams and sees visions. He believes that a book, a
story, is true; that its characters are real; that a boy named Tom
Sawyer really lives; and he ran away to see him; and yet they ask you
to believe such a boy in the face of this evidence. Why, you wouldn't
convict a yellow dog on such testimony--you are men who know boys and
know life and its affairs, and you know this story is the result of a
pure dream. I'll be charitable; the boy is dreaming; he is a dreamy boy,
an imaginative boy, a wonderful boy--but he is not to be believed. He
never saw this at all. He was never in that tree. The chances are he
picked up this pistol the next morning after passing there--after those
people had come out and searched for the pistol--who had heard three
shots, one of one report, and two of a different report. Why they didn't
find the pistol, God only knows; and the witness who could testify to it
is gone and here we are. And if you ask who the other witnesses are, I
confess I don't know. We could have found their names if we could have
talked with Harold Carman; but he's gone. And here we are, yes, in the
community of Lincoln, but in a community where cowardly people and bad
people live, like other communities. I say this because these other
people, whoever they are, should have come forward and made themselves
known. It would have been gracious if some people had come forward to
tell the truth and save; and not leave it to a boy, and him alone, to
come forward, and condemn