novice was to have floundered through his few disconnected and incoherent remarks to the jury; the leader for the Crown was to have answered him in a few perfunctory sentences, which yet would be in striking contradistinction to the halting and rather inept performance of his youthful opponent; the whole was to have been transferred to the judge with a sense of perfect security, since the case for the prosecution was so clear and so entirely uncontroverted; and the judge, very excellent in his way, and highly in favor of the despatch of public business and economization of the public time, was even to have worked in his summing-up by the hour of the adjournment.
However, this lengthy and irrelevant cross-examination, which had had to be contested at every point, had somewhat demoralized this well-considered programme. A solid hour had been cut out of it, a solid hour in which both sides could have addressed the jury; in fact, a solid hour in which, by an effort, a verdict could have been obtained and the woman hanged. And when this tyro, who was conducting his first case of importance with a coolness that many of his elders might have envied, intimated that it was not his intention to call witnesses, and further claimed in that contingency the privilege of addressing the jury after the counsel for the Crown had spoken, Mr. Weekes was fain to inform the court that he would prefer to reserve his own address to the jury, brief as it would be, until after luncheon. Accordingly the adjournment was then taken.
