But when it came to the postage-stamp, then he told himself very quickly that the envelope had been fraudulently handled.  The evidence as to the date of the manufacture of the stamp was conclusive.  It could not have served to pay the postage on a letter from Sydney to Nobble in May 1873, seeing that it had not then been in existence.  And thus any necessity there might otherwise have been for further inquiry as to the postmarks was dissipated.  The envelope was a declared fraud, and the fraud required no further proof.  That morsel of evidence had been fabricated, and laid, at any rate, one of the witnesses in the last trial open to a charge of perjury.  So resolving, Judge Bramber pushed the papers away from him, and began to think the case over in his mind.

There was certainly something in the entire case as it now stood to excuse Sir John.  That was the first line which his thoughts took.  An advocate having clearly seen into a morsel of evidence on the side opposed to him, and having proved to himself beyond all doubt that it was maliciously false, must be held to be justified in holding more than a mere advocate’s conviction as to the innocence of his client.  Sir John had of course felt that a foul plot had been contrived.  A foul plot no doubt had been contrived.  Had the discovery taken place before the case had been submitted to the jury, the detection of that plot would doubtless have saved the prisoner, whether guilty or innocent.  So much Judge Bramber admitted.

But should it necessarily serve to save him now?  Before a jury it would have saved him, whether guilty or innocent.  But the law had got hold of him, and had made him guilty, and the law need not now subject itself to the normal human weakness of a jury.  The case was now in his hands,—­in his, and those of the Secretary, and there need be no weakness.  If the man was innocent, in God’s name let him go;—­though, as the judge observed to himself, he had deserved all he had got for his folly and vice.  But this discovered plot by no means proved the man’s innocence.  It only proved the determination of certain persons to secure his conviction, whether by foul means or fair.  Then he recapitulated to himself various cases in which he had known false evidence to have been added to true, with the object of convincing a jury as to a real fact.

It might well be that this gang of ruffians,—­for it was manifest that there had been such a gang,—­finding the envelope addressed by the man to his wife, had fraudulently,—­and as foolishly as fraudulently,—­ endeavoured to bolster up their case by the postage-stamp and the postmark.  Looking back at all the facts, remembering that fatal twenty thousand pounds, remembering that though the postmarks were forged on that envelope the writing was true, remembering the acknowledged promise and the combined testimony of the four persons,—­he was inclined to think that something of the kind had been done in this case.  If it were so, though