Not one of them, however, detected this.
At table, and generally when we were shut up together in Mr.
Harker's custody, we had from the first naturally discussed the
day's proceedings a good deal. On that fifth day, the case for the
prosecution being closed, and we having that side of the question in
a completed shape before us, our discussion was more animated and
serious. Among our number was a vestryman,--the densest idiot I
have ever seen at large,--who met the plainest evidence with the
most preposterous objections, and who was sided with by two flabby
parochial parasites; all the three impanelled from a district so
delivered over to Fever that they ought to have been upon their own
trial for five hundred Murders. When these mischievous blockheads
were at their loudest, which was towards midnight, while some of us
were already preparing for bed, I again saw the murdered man. He
stood grimly behind them, beckoning to me. On my going towards
them, and striking into the conversation, he immediately retired.
This was the beginning of a separate series of appearances, confined
to that long room in which we were confined. Whenever a knot of my
brother jurymen laid their heads together, I saw the head of the
murdered man among theirs. Whenever their comparison of notes was
going against him, he would solemnly and irresistibly beckon to me.
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