Suspense Frightful
“Have you agreed upon a verdict?” repeated Judge Brentano, a little impatiently.
“We have,” replied the foreman, Hugh H. Fulton, rising and displaying a paper which he held in his right hand.
“Let the Clerk of the Court read it.”
A. J. Harris, the Clerk, was already in front of the railing to receive the paper. He took it to his desk, and holding it under an incandescent lamp, for the courtroom was dark, he read, in a loud voice:
“We, the jury, find the defendant, Dora McDonald, not guilty.”
It was as though you had touched a match to a pile of gunpowder. The people in the courtroom seemed to explode. They did not cheer, or applaud, or shout, and yet they appeared to be doing all of them. The tension was broken and a sort of bubbling effervescence took its place.