He had no sooner escaped than the prisoner struck a violent blow in the direction the warder had gone, but the door being closed, it fell harmlessly enough.  It left such a mark, however, that no doubt could be entertained as to the violence with which it was delivered and the probable result had it reached the warder himself.

Thus presented, the case looked serious.  Mr. Montagu Williams, who was counsel for the Crown, felt it to be, as it undoubtedly was, his duty in common fairness to present not only the bare facts necessary for his own case, but also those which might be relied upon by the prisoner as his defence, or at all events in mitigation of punishment.  In performing this duty, he elicited from his witness a very touching little history of the origin and cause of the crime.  It was this:—­

A poor little mouse had, somehow or other, managed to get inside the prisoner’s cell; and one day, while the unhappy man was eating his prison fare, he saw the mouse running timidly along the floor.  At last it came to a few crumbs of bread which the prisoner had purposely spread, and ran away with one of them into its hiding-place.  The next day it came again, and found more crumbs; and so on from day to day, the prisoner relieving the irksomeness and the weary solitude of his confinement by tempting it to trust him, and become his one companion and friend, till at last it became so tame that it formed a little nest, and made its home in the sleeve of the prisoner’s jail clothes.  During the long hours of the dreary day it was his companion and pet; played with him, fed with him, and mitigated his solitude.  It even slept with him at night.

All this was, of course, against the prison rules.  But the mouse had no reason to obey them.

One unhappy day a warder came into the cell, when the poor mouse peeped out from his tiny hiding-place, and the officer, I presume, as a matter of duty, seized the little intruder on the spot and captured it.

God help the world if every one did his strict duty in it!  But—­what to the prisoner seemed inexcusable barbarity—­he killed the poor little mouse in the sight of the unhappy man whose friend and companion it had been.

This infuriated him to such an extent that, having the dinner-knife in his hand—­the knife which would have assisted at the mouse’s banquet as well as his own—­he rushed at the warder, who fortunately escaped through the open door of the cell, the prisoner striking the knife into the door.

In the result the prisoner was indicted on the charge of attempting to murder the warder.  The defence was that, as murder in the circumstances was impossible, the attempt could not be established, and on the authority of a case (which has, however, since been overruled) I felt bound to direct an acquittal; and I confess I was not sorry to come to that conclusion, for it would have been a sad thing had the prisoner been convicted of an offence committed in a moment of such great and not unnatural excitement, and one for which penal servitude must have been awarded.