He had done so; and in his summing up before the jury he seemed
more than himself. When he had concluded there were many who deemed
conviction sure.
Prentiss followed, and in his grandest manner tore to tatters every
argument and every position advanced and assumed by Hardin. Towering in
the majesty of his genius in one of those transcendent flights of
imagination so peculiar to him, when his illustrations in figures
followed each other in such quick and constant succession as to seem
inexhaustible, he turned suddenly upon Hardin, and, stooping his face
until it almost touched that of the stern old Kentuckian, he hissed
forth: "Dare you, sir, ask a verdict of such a jury as is here sitting
upon this testimony?--you, sir, who under the verdict of nature must
soon appear before the awful bar to which you now strive prematurely to
consign this noble, this gallant young man! Should you succeed, you
must meet him there. Could you, in the presence of Almighty God--He who
knows the inmost thoughts--justify your work of to-day? His mandate is
not to the gibbet. Eternal Justice dictates there, whose decrees are
eternal.
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