moreover, who ever heard of a successful alibi
twice running ?"

The counsel for the prisoner had his client
taken into a room adjoining the court, and
having explained to him the extreme danger
in which he stood, informed him of the offer
made by the prosecutors. The young man
evinced some emotion, and asked his counsel
to advise what step he should take. "The
advice," he was answered, "must depend upon
a fact known to himself alone—his guilt or
innocence. If guilty, his chance of escape was
so small, that it would be the last degree of
rashness to refuse the offer; if, on the other
hand, he were innocent, his counsel, putting
himself in the place of the prisoner, would say,
that no peril, however imminent, would induce
him to plead guilty." The prisoner was
further told that in the course of a trial
circumstances often arose at the moment,
unforeseen by all parties, which disclosed the
truth; that this consideration was in his
favour, if he were innocent, but showed at the
same time that there were now chances of
danger, if he were guilty, the extent of which
could not be calculated, nor even surmised.
The youth, with perfect self-possession, and
unshaken firmness, replied, "I am innocent,
and will take my trial." He did so. Many
painful hours wore away, every moment
diminishing the prisoner's chance of acquittal,
until it seemed utterly extinguished, when
some trifling matter which had escaped the
memory of the narrator, occurred, leading him
to think it was possible that another person,
who must much resemble the prisoner, had
been mistaken for him. Enquiry was instantly
made of the family, whether they knew of any
such resemblance; when it appeared that the
prisoner had a cousin so much like himself,
that the two were frequently accosted in the
streets, the one for the other. The cousin
had absconded.

It is hardly credible, though, doubtless true,
that a family of respectable station could have
been unaware of the importance of such a
fact, or that the prisoner, who appeared not
deficient in intelligence, and who was assuredly
in full possession of his faculties, could be
insensible to its value. That either he or they
could have placed such reliance on his defence
as to induce them to screen his guilty relative,
is to the last degree improbable, especially as
the cousin had escaped. Witnesses, however,
were quickly produced, who verified the
resemblance between the two, and the counsel
for the prosecution abandoned their case,
expressing their belief that their witnesses had
given their evidence under a mistake of
identity.

The narrator added, that an alibi stood a less
chance of favourable reception at Nottingham
than elsewhere, although in every place
received with great jealousy. In one of the
trials arising out of the outrages committed
by the Luddites, who broke into manufactories
and destroyed all lace frames of a construction
which they thought oppressive to working
men, an alibi he said, had been concocted,
which was successful in saving the life of a
man notoriously guilty, and which had therefore
added to the disrepute of this species of
defence. The hypothesis was, that the
prisoner, at the time when the crime was
committed, at Loughborough, sixteen miles from
Nottingham, was engaged at a supper-party
at the latter place; and the prisoner having
the sympathy of a large class in his favour,
whose battle he had been fighting, no difficulty
was experienced by his friends in finding
witnesses willing to support this
hypothesis on their oaths; but it would have been
a rash measure to have called them into the
box unprepared. And when it is considered
how readily a preconcerted story might have
been destroyed by cross-examination, the task
of preparing the witnesses so as to elude this
test, was one requiring no ordinary care and
skill. The danger would arise thus:-- Every
witness would be kept out of court, except
the one in the box. He would be asked
where he sat at the supper? where the
prisoner sat, and each of the other guests; what
were the dishes, what was the course of
conversation, and so forth—the questions being
capable of multiplication ad infinitum; so
that, however well tutored, the witnesses
would inevitably contradict each other upon
some matters, on which the tutor had not
foreseen that the witness would be cross-
examined, or to which he had forgotten the
answer prescribed. The difficulty was,
however, surmounted. After the prisoner's
apprehension, the selected witnesses were
invited to a mackerel supper, which took place
at an hour corresponding to that at which
the crime was committed; and so careful was
the ingenious agent who devised this conspiracy
against the truth that, guided by a sure
instinct, he fixed upon the same day of the
week as that on which the crime had been
committed, though without knowing how
fortunate it would be for the prisoner that he
took this precaution. When, on cross-examination,
it was found that the witnesses agreed
as to the order in which the guests were
seated, the contents of the dishes, the
conversation which had taken place and so forth;
the counsel for the Crown suspected the plot;
but not imagining that it had been so
perfectly elaborated, they inquired of their
attorneys as to whether there was any occurrence
peculiar to the day of the week in
question, and were told that upon the evening
of such day, a public bell was always rung,
which must have been heard at the supper, if
it had taken place at the time pretended.
The witnesses were separately called back
and questioned as to the bell. They had all
heard it; and thus not only were the cross-
examiners utterly baffled, but the cross-
examination gave tenfold support to the
examination in chief, that is, to the evidence
as given by the witnesses in answer to the