by his manner, this mild gentleman abandoned for the nonce that becoming restraint which is still the accepted note of a criminal prosecution, and described murder and murderer in no measured terms. If the former had been brought home to the prisoner at the bar—if the prisoner were held to stand duly and fairly identified with the latter—then the heaviest punishment known to the law would be light in comparison with his crime. The defence he characterised as “indubitably brilliant”; yet he was afraid that the fireworks of his learned friend but served to illuminate the weakness of his case. For he had browbeaten witnesses as to minutiæ of time and place; but what had he disproved? The grievance? The threats? The fact that the prisoner and the deceased were seen together near the spot where the murder was committed, about the time of its commission? No, there had been a gallant attempt to disprove that, but it remained as much a certainty as the ownership of the lethal weapon, the black facts of the prisoner’s flight, and that possession of the dead man’s watch and chain which even counsel’s learned friend had not attempted to explain away. To be sure, he had elicited to the full, instead of attempting to disallow, the extraordinary story with which the accused had sought since his incarceration to account for those stubborn facts. The prisoner said he had given a receipt for the watch and chain! Then where was the receipt? And was that a credible or an incredible tale? Counsel had been reminded that this was for gentlemen of the jury to decide. Then let them do so; and if they found that story credible, then their duty was clear, and they would unhesitatingly acquit the prisoner at the bar; but if incredible, then their duty was no less clear, and they would discharge
