only have one termination, were delayed.  He had not long to wait.  The jury were sworn, and Mr. Gurney rose to address them for the crown.  Clear, terse, logical, powerful without the slightest pretence to what is called eloquence, his speech produced a tremendous impression upon all who heard it; and few persons mentally withheld their assent to his assertion, as he concluded what was evidently a painful task, “that should he produce evidence substantiating the statement he had made, the man who could then refuse to believe in the prisoner’s guilt, would equally refuse credence to actions witnessed by his own bodily eyes.”

The different witnesses were then called, and testified to the various facts I have before related.  Vainly did Mr. Kingston and I exert ourselves to invalidate the irresistible proofs of guilt so dispassionately detailed.  “It is useless,” whispered Mr. Sharpe, as I sat down after the cross-examination of the aged butler.  “You have done all that could be done; but he is a doomed man, spite of his innocence, of which I feel, every moment that I look at him, the more and more convinced.  God help us; we are poor, fallible creatures, with all our scientific machinery for getting at truth!”

The case for the crown was over, and the prisoner was told that now was the time for him to address the jury in answer to the charge preferred against him.  He bowed courteously to the intimation, and drawing a paper from his pocket, spoke, after a few preliminary words of course, nearly as follows:—­

“I hold in my hand a very acute and eloquent address prepared for me by one of the able and zealous gentlemen who appears to-day as my counsel, and which, but for the iniquitous law which prohibits the advocate of a presumed felon, but possibly quite innocent person, from addressing the jury, upon whose verdict his client’s fate depends, would no doubt have formed the subject-matter of an appeal to you not to yield credence to the apparently irrefragable testimony arrayed against me.  The substance of this defence you must have gathered from the tenor of the cross-examinations; but so little effect did it produce, I saw, in that form, however ably done, and so satisfied am I that though it were rendered with an angel’s eloquence, it would prove utterly impotent to shake the strong conclusions of my guilt, which you, short-sighted, fallible mortals—­short-sighted and fallible because mortal!—­I mean no disrespect—­must have drawn from the body of evidence you have heard, that I will not weary you or myself by reading it.  I will only observe that it points especially to the over-roof, so to speak, arrayed against me—­to the folly of supposing that an intentional murderer would ostentatiously persist in administering the fatal potion to the victim with his own hands, carefully excluding all others from a chance of incurring suspicion.  There are other points, but this is by far the most powerful one; and as I cannot believe that will