John's Trial

JUST where the Wilderness road of the Adirondack Highlands strikes the edge of the great Champlain Valley, in a little clearing, is a lonely log-house. On the 10th day of July, 1852, a muscular, gaunt woman stood at the door of the house, overlooking the vast extent of the valley. From her stand-point, ten miles of green forest swept down to the lake’s winding shore. She saw the indentation made in the shore line by " the bay,” and beyond, the wide waters gleaming in the fervid brightness of summer. Specks were here and there discernible in the light, flashed back from the blue, mirror-like surface, and by long watching it could be seen that these specks were moving to and fro.

The woman knew that these distant moving atoms were boats freighting lumber through Lake Champlain. She knew there was but one boat that would be likely to turn aside and come into the little bay, and that this boat would be her son John’s sloop.

That was why she watched so anxiously a speck that neared the bay and at length entered it. To make doubly sure, she brought to bear an old spyglass whose principal lens was cracked entirely through. It gave her a smoky view of the famous sloop, The Dolly Ann, John’s property, and then she was entirely certain that her son, who had been three weeks absent on his voyage, was coming home.

Jupiter, the house-dog, who had been watching her, seemed to know it too, perfectly well; for as she turned from her survey through the glass, his canine nature developed a degree of wriggling friskiness of which the grave old dog seemed half ashamed. He whined and walked about the door-yard for a few moments, then gave his mistress a long, steady look, and seeming satisfied with what he read in her face, jumped over the fence and started down the road into the valley, at a full run.

The woman knew that three or four hours must yet elapse before John and Jupiter would come along the path together, tired by their long tramp up the mountain-side. She thought and waited as lonely mothers think and wait for absent sons.

At about four o’clock, a young, darkeyed man and the dog came up the road and to the house. “ Heigho, mother, all well? ” was the man’s greeting. The woman’s greeting was only, " How do you do, John? ” There was no show of sentiment, not even a hand-shake; but a bright look in the man’s face, and a tremor in the voice of the woman, conveyed the impression that these plain people felt a great deal more than they expressed.

Two hours passed away, and after supper, the neighbors who had seen John and the dog come up the road, dropped in for a talk with “ the captain,” as John was called by his friends.

Soon the inquiry was made, “ Where did you leave your cousin William? ”

John had taken his cousin William, who lived upon the lake-shore, with him upon this last trip, and hence the question.

But John did not answer the question directly. He seemed troubled and unhappy about it. He finally acknowledged that he and William had not agreed, and that high words and blows had passed between them, and added that his cousin had finally left the boat and had gone away in a huff, he knew not where, but somewhere into the pineries of Canada. He declared, getting warm in his recollection of the quarrel, that he “ did n’t care a darn” where Will went, any way.

A month passed away; it was August. Cousin Will did not return. But certain strange stories came up the lake from Canada, and reached the dwellers along the Adirondack Wilderness road. No cousin William had been seen in the pineries; but just across the Canada line, at the mouth of Fish River, where the sloops were moored to receive their lading of lumber, a bruised, swollen, festering corpse had risen and floated in the glare of a hot, August day. The boatmen rescued it and buried it upon the shore. They described it as the body of a hale, vigorous young man, agreeing in height, size, and appearance with cousin William.

And there was another story told by the captain of a sloop which had been moored at the mouth of Fish River, near by John’s sloop, on the fatal voyage from which cousin William had not returned.

The captain said that upon the 4th of July, he had heard quarreling upon John’s sloop all the afternoon, and had noticed that only two men were there. He thought the men had been drinking. At night-fall there was a little lull; but soon after dark, the noise broke out again. He could see nothing through the gloom, but he heard high and angry words, and at length blows, and then a dull, crushing thud, followed by a plunge into the water, and then there was entire silence. He listened for an hour, in the stillness of the summer night, but heard no further sound from the boat. In the early gray of the next morning, the captain, looking across the intervening space to John’s sloop, which he described as hardly a stone’s throw from his own, saw a hat lying upon the deck, and using his glass, was confident that he saw “spatters of blood.” He thought it “ none of his business,” and taking advantage of a light breeze, sailed away and said nothing. But when the floating corpse was found, he felt sure there had been a murder, and, as he expressed it, felt bound to tell his story like an honest man, and so told it.

Putting these things together, it soon grew to be the current opinion upon the lake, that Captain John had murdered his cousin William. The dwellers upon the Wilderness road also came by slow degrees, and unwillingly, to the same conclusion. It was felt and said that John ought to be arrested.

Accordingly, on a dreary day in November, two officers, from the county town twenty miles away down the lakeshore, came and climbed the steep road to the lonely log-house, and arrested John. It was undoubtedly a dreadful blow to those two lonely people living isolated in the wilderness. Perhaps there ought to have been some crying and a scene, but there was no such thing. The officers testified that neither John nor his mother made any fuss about it. There was a slight twitching of the strong muscles of her face, as she talked with the officers, but no other outward sign.

John gave more evidence of the wound he felt. He was white and quivering, yet he silently, and without objection, made ready to go with the officers. He was soon prepared, and they started. John, as he went out of the door, turned and said, “ Good-by; it will all be made right, mother.” She simply answered, “ Yes, good-by; I know it, my son.”

The trio went on foot down the road to the next house, where the officers had left their team. Jupiter, standing up with his fore paws upon the top of the fence, gazed wistfully after them. When they passed around the bend of the road out of sight, Jupiter went into the house. The strong woman was there about her work, as usual; but the heavy tears would now and then fall upon the hard pine floor. She knew that her own boy would spend the coming night in the county jail.

At twelve o’clock of that chill November night, the woman and the dog went out of the house; she fastened the door, and then they went together down the dark mountain road, while the autumn winds swept dismally through the great wilderness, and the midnight voice of the pines mourned the dying year. The next day at noon, a very weary woman on foot, with a small bundle and a large dog, put up at the little village hotel hard by the county jail.

Another day passed and then the preliminary examination came on before a justice, to determine whether there was sufficient evidence to hold John in custody until a grand jury of the county should be assembled for the next Court of Oyer and Terminer.

Three days were spent in this examination before the justice; the captain of the sloop who had overheard the quarrel in the night told his story, and the boatmen who had found the body told theirs. Two men who had been the crew of John’s little vessel were also called. But they could tell little more than that they were absent on shore upon the 4th of July, and when they returned to the vessel William had gone, they knew not where nor why.

The evidence against John seemed to the magistrate clear and conclusive. But the counsel for the accused (employed by John’s mother) took the ground that as the offense was committed in Canada, a justice in the United States had no jurisdiction in the matter.

This view prevailed, and after five days the accused was set at liberty. But that voice of the people, which the ancient proverb says is like the voice of God, had decided that John was guilty. It was under this crushing condemnation that John and his mother left the county town on a cold December day, turning their steps homeward; and at evening they climbed the acclivity so familiar to them, and reached the lonely log-house upon the mountain. Their neighbors were glad to see them back again, but were plain to say that “ it appeared like as if John was guilty.” These dwellers in the solitudes were accustomed to speak truly what they thought. John and his mother too spoke openly of this matter. It was only of showing affection and love that these people were ashamed and shy. They both admitted to their neighbors that the evidence was very strong, but John added quietly that he was not guilty, as if that settled the whole matter.

But the voice of the people and a sense of justice would not let this crime rest. It came to be very generally known that a man guilty of murder was living near the shore of Lake Champlain unmolested. Arrangements were effected by which it came to pass that the Canadian authorities made a formal application to the United States for the delivery of one John Wilson, believed to be guilty of the murder of his cousin William Wilson.

And so again two officers, this time United States officials, climbed up to the little log-house upon the edge of the great valley. Through a drifting, blinding storm of snow they were piloted by a neighbor to the lonely house. They made known their errand, and in the course of half an hour the officers and their prisoner were out in the storm en route for the distant city of Montreal.

It was many days before the woman saw her son again. For four months John was imprisoned, awaiting his trial before the Canadian courts. Doubtless those four months seemed long to the solitary woman. She had not much opportunity to indulge in melancholy fancies; she spent much of her time in pulling brush and wood out of the snow and breaking it up with an ax, so as to adapt it to the size of her stove.

The neighbors tried to be kind, and often took commissions from her to the store and the grist-mill in the valley: “But after all,” said Pete Searles, one of John’s friends, in speaking of the matter afterward, “what could neighbors amount to, when the nearest of them lived a mile away, and all of them were plain to say that they believed she was the mother of a murderer ?”

But the neighbors said the woman did not seem to mind the solitude and the rough work. Morning, noon, and night she was out in the snow or the storm at the little hovel of a barn back of the house, taking care of two cows and a few sheep which were hers and John’s. At other times travelers upon the Wilderness road would see her gaunt, angular figure clambering down a rocky ridge, dragging poles to the house to be cut up for fuel.

She received two letters from John in the course of the winter. The first told her that he was imprisoned, and awaiting his trial in Montreal, and the next one said that his trial had been set down for an early day in March.

This correspondence was all the information the mother had of her son; for the lake was frozen during the winter, so that the boats did not run, and no news could come from Canada by the boatmen.

When March came and passed away without intelligence from John, it was taken by the dwellers upon the lakeshore and along the Wilderness road as a sure indication that he had been convicted of the crime. A letter or newspaper announcing the fact was confidently looked for by the neighbors whenever they went to the distant post-office for their weekly mail.

As March went out, and spring days and sunshine came, it was noticed that the face of John’s mother looked sharp and white, but she went about the same daily duties as before, without seeming to feel ill or weak.

On a plashy April day full of sunshine, she stood on the rocky ridge back of the house, looking down upon the lake. A few early birds had come back and were twittering about the clearing. Although the snow still lingered in patches upon the highlands, the valley looked warm below, and the first boats of the season were dotting the wide, distant mirror of “ old Champlain.” A man came slowly up the muddy line of road, through the gate, and around the house; then first the woman saw him. A slight spasm passed over her face. There was a little pitiful quiver of the muscles about the mouth, and then she walked slowly down the ridge to where the man stood. She struggled a little with herself before she said, “ Well, John, I am glad to see you back.”

John tried to be cool also, but nature was too much for him. He could not raise his eyes to hers, and his simple response, “ Yes, mother,” was chokingly uttered.

The two walked into the house together in the old familiar way; the woman without a word began to spread the table, and her son went out and prepared fuel, and bringing it in replenished the fire. Then he sat down in his accustomed place by the stove, with a pleasant remark about how well the fire burned, and how good it seemed to be home again. And the woman spoke a few kind, motherly words.

It was the way they had always done when John came back, but now there was a great sadness in it, for he had come “from prison.” Jupiter seemed fully to realize the situation. He exhibited none of that friskiness which characterized the welcome he had usually given: but when John was seated the old dog came slowly up to him, laid his fore paws and his head in his master’s lap, and looked sadly in his face.

As they sat down to supper, John began to tell of his fare in the jail at Montreal, and to speak freely of his life there. “ Will you have to go back?” said his mother with that quiver about the mouth again. “No, mother,” said John, “it is finished, and I am discharged.”

After supper the story was told over, how well John’s counsel had worked for him, and how the judge had said there was not sufficient evidence to convict of so great a crime.

John continued from this time on through the spring to live at home. He allowed his sloop to float idly in the bay, while, as he said, he himself rested. The truth was, he saw, as others did not, that his mother had carried a fearful weight, and now, when it was lifted by his return, that the resources of her life were exhausted. The change, not yet apparent to other eyes, was clear to his vision. So it is that these silent spirits read each other.

As the warm weather advanced, the strong woman became weak; and as the June flowers began to bloom, she ceased to move about much, and sat the most of each day in a chair by the open door. John managed the house and talked with his mother. Her mind changed with the relaxation of her physical frame. She no longer strove to hide her tears, but, like a tired infant, would weep without restraint or concealment, as she told her son of the early loves and romance of her girlhood life in a warm valley of the West. He learned more of his mother’s heart in those June days than he had surmised from all he had known of her before. And he understood what this predicted. He felt, that the heart nearest his own was counting over the treasures of life ere it surrendered them forever.

There was no great scene when the woman died. It was at evening, just as the July fervors were coming on. She had wept much in the morning. As the day grew warm she became very weak and faint, and about noon was moved by her son from her chair to her bed, and so died as the sun went down.

John was alone in the house when she died. Since his return from Montreal, he had been made to feel that he had but one friend besides his mother. Only one neighbor had called upon him, and that was Pete Searles. He had ever proved true. But John did not like to trouble his one friend, who lived two miles away, to come and stay with him during the night. So he lighted a candle, took down from a shelf a little Bible and hymn-book that he and his mother had carried on an average about four times a year to a school-house used as a church, some six miles away, and so alone with the dead he spent the hours in reading and tears and meditation.

In the morning he locked the door of his home and walked “ over to Pete’s.” As ho met his friend, he said in a clear voice, but with eyes averted, “ She has gone, Pete — if you will just take the key and go over there, I’ll go down to the lake, arid get the things, and tell Downer, and we ’ll have the funeral, say on Thursday.”

Pete hesitated a moment, then took the key John offered him, and said, ” Yes, John, I will tell my woman, and we will go over and fix it, and be there when you come back.” And so John went on his way. “ Downer” was the minister, and “the things” were a coffin and a shroud.

On Thursday was the funeral. Pete took eare to have all the people of the neighborhood there, although it hardly seemed as if John desired it. The popular voice, having once decided it, still held John as a murderer, and claimed that he was cleared from the charge only by the tricks of his lawyer. John knew of this decision. At the funeral he was stern, cold, white, and statuelike. While others wept, but few tears fell from his eyes, and even these seemed wrung from him by an anguish for the most part suppressed or concealed.

He chose that his mother should be buried, not in the “ burying-ground ” at the settlement, but upon their own little farm where she had lived. And so in a spot below the rocky ridge, where wild violets grew, she was laid to rest.

John spent the night following the funeral at Pete’s house, then returned to his own home, and from that time his solitary life began. He took his cattle and his sheep over to Pete’s, made all fast about his home, and resumed his boating upon Lake Champlain. He fully realized that he was a marked man. He was advised, it was said even by his own legal counsel, to leave the country, and to leave his name behind him: but no words influenced him. Firm and steady in his course, strictly temperate and just, he won respect where he could not gain confidence.

The years rolled by. Captain John still was a boatman, and still kept his home at the lonely log-house on the edge of the great valley. From each voyage he returned and spent a day and night alone at the old place; and it was noticed that a strong, high paling was built around his mother’s grave, and a marble head-stone was placed there, and other flowers grew with the wild violets. Even in winter, when there was no boating and he boarded down by the lake, he made many visits to the old homestead. His figure, which, though youthful, was now growing gaunt and thin as his mother’s had been, was often seen by Pete at nightfall upon the top of a certain rocky ridge, standing out clear and sharp against the cold blue steel of the winter sky.

John had no companions and sought none. The young men and women of his set had married and settled in life; he was still the same.

But there came a change. Eleven years had passed since the mother died, and it was June again. John was spending a day at the old place once more. He sat in the door, looking out on the magnificent landscape, the broad lake, and the dim line of mountains away across the valley. The lovely day seemed to cheer this stern, lonely man.

Three persons came up the road: they advanced straight to where John was sitting. One of them stepped forward, looked John steadily in the face, held out his hand to him, and said, “John, do you know me? ”

The voice seemed to strike him with a sharp, stunning shock. He quivered, held his breath, stared into the eyes of the questioner, and then suddenly becoming unnaturally cool and collected, said, “Is it you, William? ”

The two who stood back had once been John’s warmest friends. They now came forward, and with such words as they could command, told the story of William’s sudden return, and sought for themselves forgiveness for the cruel and false suspicion which had so long estranged them from their friend.

John seemed to hear this as one in a dream. He talked with William and the men in a manner that seemed strangely cold and indifferent, about where William had been voyaging so long in distant seas, and of his strange absence. A quarter of an hour passed away. The men proposed that John should go with them to their homes, and said there would be a gathering of friends there. They pressed the invitation with warmth, and such true feeling as our voices express when a dear friend has been greatly wronged, and we humbly acknowledge it.

John said absently, in reply, that he did not know. He looked uneasily around as if in search of something, perhaps his hat. He essayed to rise from his chair, but could not; and in a moment he fell back ashy pale, fainting and breathless. The men had not looked for this, but accustomed as they were to the rough life of the wilderness, they were not alarmed. They fanned the fainting man with their straw huts, and as soon as water could be found, applied it to his hands and face. He soon partially recovered, and looking up, said in a broken voice, “ Give me a little time, boys.” At this hint, the two old friends, who were now crying, stepped out of the door, and cousin William sat down out upon the door-step.

John found that a little time was not enough. He had traveled too long and far in that fearful desert of loneliness, easily or quickly to return. A nervous fever followed the shock he received, and for two months he did not leave the homestead, and was confined to his bed. But the old house was not lonely. The men and women came, both his old friends and some newcomers, and tried to make up to him in some degree the love and sympathy he had so long missed. But for many days it was evident that their kindness pained and oppressed him.

“It appears like,” said Pete, “that a rough word don’t hurt him, but a kind one he can’t stand.” And this was true. His soul was fortified against hatred and contempt, but a kind voice, or a gentle caress, seemed to wound him so that he would sob like an infant.

As he recovered from his illness he continued gentle, kind, and shrinking, to a fault. By the operation of some spiritual law that I do not fully comprehend, he was, after his recovery, one of those who win a strange affection from others. His influence seemed like a mild fascination. It was said of him in after years, that he was more truly loved, and by more people, than any other man or woman in all the settlements round. Children loved him with a passionate attachment, and the woman of child-like nature whom he made his wife is said to have died of grief at his death. He departed this life at the age of thirty-eight years, and he sleeps on the edge of the great valley, with his mother and his wife beside him.

P. Deming.