proceeding of his, he had even given them a double chance of being traced.  He (Mr. Balais) was not there, of course, to justify the conduct of the prisoner at the bar.  It was unjustifiable, it was reprehensible in a very high degree; but what he did maintain was that, even taking for granted all that had been put in evidence, this young man’s conduct was not criminal; it was not that of a thief.  He had never had the least intention of stealing this money; his scheme had been merely a stratagem to obtain the object of his affections for his wife.  This Trevethick was a hard and grasping man, and it was necessary for the young fellow to satisfy him that he was possessed of certain property before he would listen to any proposition for his daughter’s hand.  His idea—­a wrong and foolish one, indeed, but then look at his youth and inexperience—­was to impose upon this old miser, by showing him his own money in another form, and then, when he had gained his object, to return it to him.  Mr. Balais was, for his own part, as certain of such being the fact as that he was standing in that court-house.  Let them turn their eyes on the unhappy prisoner in the dock, and judge for themselves whether he looked like the mere felon which his learned friend had painted him, or the romantic, self-deceiving, thoughtless lad, such as he (Mr. Balais) felt convinced he was.  They had all heard of the proverb that all things were fair in love as in war.  When the jury had been young themselves perhaps some of them had acted upon that theory; at all events, it was not an unnatural idea for young people to act upon.  Proverbs had always a certain weight and authority of their own.  They were not necessarily Holy Writ (Mr. Balais was not quite certain whether the proverb in question was one of Solomon’s own or not, so he put it in this cautious manner), but they smacked of it.  This Richard Yorke, perhaps, had thought it no great harm to win his love by a false representation of the state of his finances.  He could not see his way how otherwise to melt the stony heart of this old curmudgeon, who had doubtless—­notwithstanding the evidence they had heard from him that day—­encouraged the young man’s addresses so long as he believed him to be Mr. Carew’s lawful heir.  The whole question, in fact, resolved itself into one of motive; and if there was not a word of evidence forthcoming upon the prisoner’s part, he (Mr. Balais) would have left the case in the jury’s hands, with the confident conviction that they would never impute to that unhappy boy—­who had already suffered such tortures of mind and body as were more than a sufficient punishment for his offense—­the deliberate and shameful crime of which he stood accused.  He had lost his position in the world already; he had lost his sweetheart, for they had all heard that day that she was about to be driven into wedlock with his rival, a man twice his age and hers; he had lost the protection of his father—­his own flesh