I now come to a series of facts of a sensational character.  On the Monday morning she went, according to the appointment, and was seen to go with this man up a flight of steps which led from the yard to the first floor.  The door opened on to the landing outwardly.  In about a quarter of an hour after she was seen staggering down the steps, and crossing the yard in the direction of the street.  In the street she fell, and was conveyed to a neighbouring house.  She was afterwards taken to a hospital.

In the course of some minutes the man himself came down the steps, and was informed that a girl had been seen coming out of his premises bleeding, and had been taken to a cottage.

“Was there?” said he, and walked away.

In the afternoon he was apprehended.  He said he was very sorry, but that he was showing the girl a little toy pistol, and that it had gone off:  quite accidentally.  He wished to be taken to the hospital where she was.

The magistrate in the meanwhile had been informed of the occurrence, and with his clerk attended at the hospital to take her dying deposition.

There was an amount of skill and ability about the prisoner which was somewhat surprising to me, who am seldom surprised at anything.

“Did you not think it was an accident?” he asked.

The dying girl answered, “Yes.”

In re-examination by the magistrate’s clerk at the end of the business, the following answer was elicited,—­

“I thought it was an accident before the second shot was fired.”

The extraordinary part of this story, to my mind, is that the able counsel—­and able he indeed was who defended him—­treated the matter as the most frivolous prosecution that was ever instituted.  I know that he almost laughed at the idea of murder, and, further, that the junior counsel for the prosecution treated the charge in the same manner, and said that, in his opinion, there was no case.

The man was indicted for wilful murder, and I am bound to say, after reading the depositions, I could come to no other conclusion than that he was guilty of the most cruel and deliberate murder, if the depositions were correct.

I went with the counsel on both sides to view the scene of the tragedy, and it was agreed that the counsel for the prosecution should indicate as well as he could the case for the Crown by merely stating undisputed facts in connection with the premises.

The flight of steps, as I have said, led from the courtyard to the first landing.

The door opened outwards, and the first visible piece of evidence was that some violence had been exercised in forcing open the door on the occasion of some one making his or her escape from the building, for the staple into which the bolt of the lock had been thrust showed that the door had been locked on the inside, and that the person coming from the premises must have used considerable force in breaking through.