that the gentleman witness spoke to was the
prisoner, though witness thought he was. It
was getting dark.

' Was there," asked Marsden, in
cross-examination, " light enough to see the colour
of the traveller's horse?"

"Oi, there war that.  It war a grey
horse—a'most white."

"Could you distinguish the colour of the
gentleman's coat?"

"Well, no. But it was a darkish coat."

"It was not a white coat?"

"No, it warn't"

The aspect of the jury-box here changed.
Instead of two rows of motionless faces,
it suddenly presented several knots of shoulders
and heads, that gave forth a confused
buzz, in which the bar-maid's evidence, thus
flatly contradicted, was mentioned.   The
Other Side bent down the corners of its
mouth, and leaned back, throwing its pen
upon the table contemptuously.  Then its
senior rose, and, in a confident tone, called
Thomas Tanner.

Thomas Tanner swore that it was he who
rode the old grey horse from Pentridge to
Eastwood.   It was the prisoner's horse.  The
prisoner, dressed in a dark coat, was the person
called the Young Squire, who appeared
at the meeting.   He had no doubt of his
identity.   He'd swear to him amongst a
thousand.   Serjeant Moss gave the jury a
sharp nod, which implied, "that point is
settled;"  whereupon the knots in the jury-box
relaxed again into two rows of calm,
convinced faces.

The defence put one last question to
Thomas Tanner:—

"You turned approver at the trial of the
so-called Nottingham Captain, did you not?"
And it got a reluctant affirmative.  The jury
again consulted busily amongst themselves.
This closed the case for the prosecution.

Marsden's lip quivered and his hand shook
when, standing up to commence the defence,
he looked round for Vollum. Should he
ask for time, or should he go on, now that
the jury seemed on the whole generously
disposed ? He determined to proceed. He
would talk on and gain time until the witness
upon whose testimony the entire defence
rested, should arrive; if indeed Vollum could
succeed in bringing her. He plunged into
his exordium almost recklessly. He pointed
out the extraordinary disadvantages under
which the defence laboured; the absence of
his own leader, and the consequent loss to the
prisoner of the two addresses to the jury
which the law mercifully allowed to
persons accused of high treason. When he
alluded to certain distressing passages of
his client's private life; when he revealed
that the gentleman at the bar had, within
scarcely a year, become a husband and a
bereft father; when he pictured the desolation
of her who was nearest and dearest to
him, the jury showed signs of emotion. He
would not, Marsden continued to say, dispute
the law of the case as laid down by his learned
friend the counsel for the crown; but would
address himself wholly to the facts.   Could
they believe the oath of the witness Knolliver?
Could they believe a man who assumed a
variety of aliases, and whom he would prove
to be a traitor and a spy?   (The county
gentlemen in the jury-box shookd their heads
and moved their elbows uneasily.)   Could
they believe the witness Tanner, who had
turned king's evidence against the wretched
persons now awaiting the execution of their
dreadful sentence?   And upon whose evidence
did the accusation rest?   Why, upon those
men, and those only.  Even if they could be
believed, Marsden denied that they had done
so much as even establish the identity of the
prisoner in connecting him with the
transactions of the ninth of June.  Could it be
credited that a man who appeared in the
public road on a black mare in a white coat,
could be the same individual, who, after
an incredibly short interval of time, was
seen on the same public road, on a white
gelding in a dark coat?   Could he have
changed his horse and his clothes by magic?

Here the prisoner, roused by the fervour
of Marsden's appeal, rose and uttered what
appeared to be a protest.   But the Chief
Justice, leaning very far over his desk, told
him, that he must either leave his case wholly
in the hands of the barrister, or wholly take
it out of them.

"Meantime let me ask you, Mr. Marsden,"
said another of the judges, "what you are
going upon?   Do you, or do you not, intend
to set up an alibi?"   His lordship merely
asked the question to save the time of the
court.

This was an anxious moment.   Marsden
must now elect either to set up a
defence for the support of which the direct
evidence he was waiting for had not
arrived—would, perhaps, never arrive—or
he must simply abandon the case to mere
conjectures and probabilities. He stood
nervously clenching his brief with one hand, his
face turned full towards the door:

But, at this critical moment it opened.
Mr. Vollum dragged, rather than supported,
a lady through the crowded passage into
the body of the court. Marsden fetched a
long deep breath, as if an incubus had been
removed from him. But the new presence in
the court had an opposite effect upon the
prisoner. A single shudder manifested his
astonishment and despair. He exclaimed " My
God! " and, sinking into the chair, buried his
face within his hands, like one stricken. Mrs.
Tuckey gave up her seat to the lady, who
trembled from head to foot, and could not
once raise her eyes from the ground to look
at the prisoner.

"Yes, my lord, and gentlemen of the jury,"
Marsden continued, in a clear, full, almost
cheerful voice, " that is our defence. We