anything she had ever pictured to herself at other
times, for the vast hall in which it took place
was almost empty and very dark. Only light
enough to see that the judge by whom she was
to be tried was—horror of horrors—Jane
Cantanker! Jane Cantanker turned into an old
man; there was a ghastly thing, too, yet Jane
Cantanker herself. There was no other judge, no
jury, no spectators, except one who sat at the
furthest end of the hall, eating at a table covered
with a white cloth. He was a perplexing
person this, and had no settled identity, but
kept on changing. Now he was the chaplain of
the jail, and now again he was Julius
Lethwaite. At one time he would be that Dr. Giles,
surgeon to the police, who was called in when
Miss Carrington died, and at another he would
wear the appearance of a clown—a stage clown,
painted white and red, and very terrible to
behold. Even in a dream it seemed something
inconsistent that he should go on eating, too, in
a court of justice, and it seemed odd, also, that
the table at which he ate, and over which the
white cloth was spread, should be in shape like
a coffin.

Gilbert was there, and she knew that he was
to plead for her defence. Oh, she was sensible
enough about that. There were no other
barristers present, though, and no court officials.
The whole trial was in the hands of Gilbert and
the judge, for the man who sat in the corner
eating took no part in it at all. He never left
off eating except to stare with wan eyes at her,
and slowly to draw his knife across his throat
in dumb show, intimating to her that she need
not hope for mercy. Horrible action, taking
into consideration the look of the man and his
surroundings, and the fact of his being the only
person present. But it was all horrible, and
most horrible of all was the silence in which the
whole trial was conducted. The judge did not
speak, and, as for Gilbert, he made no attempt
to defend her. He sat with his arms folded,
leaning back in his seat, with a sort of sarcastic
smile upon his face. Even when the witnesses
began to appear they never spoke. They came
up one by one and denounced her in dumb show.
They pointed at her. They made horrible
grimaces, and shook their heads at her, but they
did not speak. Nor did any one of them ever
retire. They came up one by one, till at last
they were all assembled in array against her.
There they stood grinning and mouthing and
pointing at her. In the place into which they
were penned, there was not room for them all
to stand abreast, and so those behind were fain
to leap up and down in a sort of monotonous
dance, in order that they might show themselves
above the heads of those in the front rank, and
might, like them, denounce her by their gestures.
Among them—all those that stood pointing
silently in front, and those who leaped and
danced behind—there was not a single face that
she knew, except one. There was one of those
witnesses who remained quite quiet in a shadowy
corner, and never moved or ceased to gaze upon
her. Why, it was Jane Cantanker again! The
judge was gone, and there was she who had
been the judge, penned in among the witnesses
—the silent witnesses against her. And still her
husband did nothing to help her, only sat by
and smiled.

And she herself, she who was undergoing this
horrible ordeal, what could she do? Nothing,
absolutely nothing. Totally tongue-tied and
paralysed. Terror, the terror that we know in
dreams, was upon her, but she could not cry out
for help, nor even appeal to Gilbert, to entreat
him not to sit there and smile, but to come and
help her—help her, above all things, against
those dreadful witnesses who mouthed and
pointed at her.

But she was convicted. In a moment, she
knew not how or by whom, but she knew it.
She was doomed, and they were all against her,
and there sat her husband, her own Gilbert,
unmoved, with folded arms, and still with that
dreadful smile. Will he never stir? He does
not even look at her. He sits and smiles, even
now, when she has been convicted—now, when
she is to die, when all the witnesses in two rows,
one above the other, are pointing at her—not
now, when the man who was eating—what is he
doing? He is kneeling on one knee, surely, on
the coffin-table, and he has got a gun, and is
taking aim at her. There is no escape, the gun
follows her, the muzzle is pointed at her. If
she throws herself down, the gun is lowered.
If she springs up, it is raised. It is always
pointed at her. And now she is still, she cannot
move for fear. She cannot move nor scream for
help. His aim is steady now—and now—he
fires.

Gabrielle started up with a scream, awakened
in a moment by the crash. The noise was a real
noise. It was caused by the sudden drawing
back of the bolt outside her door, but the poor
dreamer could at first neither understand this
nor anything else. She was all in her dream.
It had been so true, so terrible, that for the
time it was actually stronger than fact. The
dream was the real thing, and what was now
going on around her was the vision.

By degrees realities began to assert
themselves once more, and she knew that she had
dreamed. That was the first symptom of returning
consciousness. Then came a dreadful
thought; this was the day of her trial. She
did not wake, as the reader does from a fearful
dream, finding that he is in his own home, and
that it was all fancy. She did not wake thus.
It was not all fancy, for this was the day of her
trial, and oh, if that dream should be ominous.

Still half bewildered, Gabrielle becomes
conscious that there is some one speaking to her.
It is a female turnkey, who entered when that
bolt, whose loud report came so aptly into
Gabrielle's dream, was withdrawn. The woman
holds a note in her hand, and solicits Gabrielle's
attention to it. She sees her husband's
handwriting, and is broad awake in a moment. The
note runs thus:

"A new witness has turned up at the last
moment. He has been in the habit of selling