There were many others, no doubt necessary for the case, but hardly necessary for the telling of the story.  Captain Munday was there, the captain of the Goldfinder, who spoke of Caldigate’s conduct on board, and of his own belief that they two were engaged when they left the ship.  ’As we are prepared to acknowledge that there was an engagement, I do not think that we need trouble you, Captain Munday,’ said Sir John.  ‘We only deny the marriage.’  Then the cheque for twenty thousand pounds was produced, and clerks from the bank to prove the payment, and the old waiter from the Jericho Coffee-house,—­and others, of whom Sir John Joram refused to take any notice whatever.  All that had been acknowledged.  Of course the money had been paid.  Of course the intimacy had existed.  No doubt there had been those interviews both at Folking and up in London.  But had there ever been a marriage in that tent at Ahalala?  That, and that only, was the point to which Sir John Joram found it necessary to give attention.

A slight interval was allowed for lunch, and then Sir John rose to begin his speech.  It was felt on all sides that his speech was to be the great affair of the trial.  Would he be able so to represent these witnesses as to make a jury believe that they had sworn falsely, and that the undoubted and acknowledged conspiracy to raise money had been concocted without any basis of truth?  There was a quarter of an hour during which the father remained with his son in the precincts of the prison, and then the judge and the lawyers, and all they whose places were assured to them trooped back into court.  They who were less privileged had fed themselves with pocketed sandwiches, not caring to risk the loss of their seats.

Sir John Joram began by holding, extended in his fingers towards the jury, the envelope which had undoubtedly been addressed by Caldigate to ‘Mrs. Caldigate, Ahalala, Nobble,’ and in which a certain letter had been stated to have been sent by him to her.  ’The words written on that envelope,’ said he, ’are to my mind the strongest evidence I have ever met of the folly to which a man may be reduced by the softness of feminine intercourse.  I acknowledge, on the part of my client, that he wrote these words.  I acknowledge that if a man could make a woman his wife by so describing her on a morsel of paper, this man would have made this woman his wife.  I acknowledge so much, though I do not acknowledge, though I deny, that any letter was ever sent to this woman in the envelope which I hold in my hand.  His own story is that he wrote those words at a moment of soft and foolish confidence, when they two together were talking of a future marriage,—­a marriage which no doubt was contemplated, and which probably had been promised.  Then he wrote the address, showing the woman the name which would be hers should they ever be married;—­and she has craftily kept the document.  That is his story.  That is my story.  Now I must show you why I think it