and blood—­for since this miserable occurrence he had chosen to disown him; and yet here was the prosecutor, who had lost nothing (except his own self-respect, and the respect of all who had listened to his audacious testimony that morning), pressing for a conviction, for more punishment; in a word, for the gratification of a mean revenge.  If he (Mr. Balais) had nothing more, therefore, to urge in his client’s defense, he would have been content to leave the jury to deal with this case—­Englishmen, who detested oppression, and loved that justice only which is tempered with mercy.  But as it so happened, there was no need thus to leave it; no necessity to appeal to mercy at all.  He had only to ask them for the barest justice.  He was happily in a position to prove that the prisoner at the bar had no more stolen this two thousand pounds than their own upright and sagacious foreman.

A sigh of relief was uttered from a hundred gentle breasts.  “We are coming to something at last,” it seemed to say.  A hundred fair faces looked at Mr. Balais—­who was growing gray and wrinkled, and found every new performance of his pantomime harder and harder—­as though they could have kissed him, nevertheless.  “Yes, gentlemen of the jury, that money was given to him by the prosecutor’s daughter with her own hand.”

A murmur of satisfaction ran round the court-house.

There was a romance—­a love-story—­in the case, then, after all.

Mr. Balais concluded a most energetic speech with a peroration of great brilliancy, in which Richard and Harry were exhibited like a transparency in the bright colors of Youth, and Hope, and Passion, and finally sat down amidst what would have been a burst of applause but for the harsh voice of the usher nipping it in the bud by proclaiming silence.

There was no need for his doing that when Mr. Balais jumped up to his feet again, as though he were on springs, and called for Harry Trevethick.  The judge was taking snuff at the time; and such was the stillness that you could hear the overplus falling on the paper before him on which he wrote down his notes.  There was a minute’s delay, during which every eye was fixed upon the witness-box, and then Harry appeared.  She was very pale, and wore a look of anxious timidity; but a bright spot came into her cheeks as she turned her face to the prisoner in the dock, and smiled upon him.  From that moment Richard felt that he was safe.  Guarded as he was, and still in peril, he forgot his danger, and once more resolved that he would cleave to this tender creature, to whom he was about to owe his safety, to his life’s end.

Harry was simply yet attractively attired in a pale violet silk dress, with a straw bonnet trimmed with the same modest color.  It was observed, with reference to this and to the innocence and gentleness of her expression, that she looked like a dove; and a dove she seemed to Richard, bringing him the signal that the flood was abating, the deep waters of which had so nearly overwhelmed both soul and body.  Even the judge, as Mr. Weasel had foretold, regarded her through his double glasses with critical approval; for a most excellent judge he was—­of female attractions.