plead alibi. I have nothing more to say.
Our witnesses will do the rest."

Serjeant Moss looked up at Marsden, and
said, with a smile, " Now, really this is too—
well, we shall see."

The witness was in the box, with her head
averted from the prisoner.

The words, " Speak up! " which ended the
form of oath as administered by the swearing
officer, seemed to be a necessary adjuration
to this witness; for, surely from so fragile
and trembling a form; from so pale a face,
with its large, rimmed, wan eyes; from
such parched, colourless lips, the sounds
that were to come would be very faint and
low. Yet, the first answer startled the whole
assembly by its distinctness and clearness.
The prisoner, when it struck upon his ear,
uttered a hollow, despairing groan.

Her testimony was to the effect that, at
ten o'clock on the night of the ninth of
June, George Dornley, " my husband"
(spoken in a louder and prouder tone),
arrived at the cottage at Crookston Withers.
Then the witness faltered. She was very
ill at that time, she continued, but not too ill
to recollect that he came; that she spoke
to him, as he sat or stood beside her couch.
She remembered what she said to him.

"And what," Serjeant Moss, interrogated,
"did he say to you ?"

She paused, and moved her eyes quickly,
as if making a strong effort of memory. The
question was repeated. She could not answer
it, and it was not pressed; but she responded
to succeeding questions readily. He was
present beside her from long after nine o'clock,
until—until—. Her eyes, gradually turning,
as if by slow but irresistible fascination
towards her husband, at length rested
upon him crouching, prostrate, overwhelmed;
and, frantically stretching out her arms towards
him, she exclaimed " George! " and
swooning, fell upon the rail of the witness-
box.

The commotion occasioned by her removal
from the court drowned the commencement
of the prosecuting counsel's reply; which
was, however, short, and not very lucid; for
the last witness had overthrown all his
calculations, and neutralised all his well-studied
arguments.

The presiding judge, in summing up,
balanced the extraordinary contradictions
in the evidence without professing to reconcile
them. "You may find it difficult," he
said to the jury, "to unite, out of the evidence
I have just read to you, the rider of
the two horses and the wearer of the two
coats in one person, and that person the
prisoner; but it will be for you to say whether
you can do so with sufficient accuracy to fix
his identity. I frankly confess to you, that
the evidence of the lady who was last
examined (who, I am bound to state, gave her
evidence with remarkable clearness so long
as she could control her feelings) appears to
me to render the conflict of testimony
explicable upon no other ground than that of the
witness labouring under some hallucination
respecting the arrival of her husband at her
house, and his presence at the time, and during
all the time which other witnesses have sworn
that he was present elsewhere. Still, there
being no evidence before us as to that, no
supposition must for one moment weigh in
your minds against positive evidence."

During the dead silence which reigned in
the court while the jury were absent
considering their verdict, the little barmaid wept
in her mother's lap, and the landlady wept
too; for hysterical shrieks pierced the court
from the witness's room; into which Eusta
Dornley had been assisted. .

But there was a dead silence when the jury
re-appeared, and the crier put the question—

"How say you, gentlemen of the jury,
guilty or not guilty!"

Not a breath was drawn until the foreman
had pronounced the words:—

' NOT GUILTY!"

CHAPTER THE NINTH.

THE morning after George Dornley's trial
was not a very gloomy time in Derby, although
a public execution had taken place in the
town. The Nottingham Captain and some
of his tithing-men had paid the terrible
penalty of their belief in the glowing statements
of Mr. Knolliver, and in their own
ability to put down borough-mongering by
force of arms, to improve trade, and to repeal
taxation. So far, the plans of his majesty's
ministers prospered. The dreadful lesson
would, they believed, spread terror and
obedience throughout the land. But George
Dornley's acquittal was an untoward event.
His conviction would have favoured the
notion that the Strong Government of that
day exercised no class favouritism, and
that gentle and simple were made equally
to feel the weight of its iron authority.
Although the Young Squire was a
local political idol, his escape from the fate
which that morning overtook his fellow-
prisoners did not improve public faith in even-
handed justice. Everybody knew, it was
argued, that Mr. George Dornley appeared
at the Pentridge meeting; the jury must
have known he was there; his own counsel
knew it; the judges knew it; and if
his wife had been the wife of a puddler
or frame-work knitter, d'ye think she would
have been believed? But, poor soul! what
she did, she did for the best; and the best
came of it: for Young Dornley was a good
lad—they all knew that—and nobody could
say they were not glad he was let free.

This was the general turn of talk at the
bars and in the tap rooms of the Derby
public-houses; over the counters of most of
the shops; in the mills and factories where
holiday had not been made; and in the
market-place—for the great Gallows Instructor