Eustace Graham

Eustace Graham, the District Attorney who prosecutes Lee Goodwin, grew up in Jefferson. According to Horace, he is a "damn little squirt" (185) who probably pressured the hotel into turning Ruby out. According to the narrator, he has "a club foot, which had probably elected him to the office he now held" (261). He earned the town's sympathy by his hard work, which got him into the State University, but at the same time made money, and acquired a reputation for unscrupulousness, playing poker "behind drawn shades" in the office of the livery stable (262). He is ambitious - or, as the narrator puts it, has "a certain alert rapacity about the eyes" (262) - and plans to run for Congress on the basis of convicting Goodwin. The "clumsy clog-step" he dances in the privacy of his office after Narcissa reveals Horace's plans to him suggests how excited he is at the thought of winning (as well as how little sympathy the narrator has for him, 264). It is not clear, however, whether he knows that the damning testimony against Goodwin he elicits from Temple is perjured.