“Mr. Archfield!  The prisoner?  Did he come to gather mouse-ear too?”

“No.  His wife had sent him over with a pattern of sarcenet for me to match in London.”

“Early rising and prompt obedience.”  And there ensued the inquiries that brought out the history of what she had seen of the encounter, of the throwing the body into the vault, full dressed, and of her promise of silence and its reason.  Mr. Cowper did not molest her further except to make her say that she had been five months at the Court, and had accompanied the late Queen to France.

Then came the power of cross-examination on the part of the prisoner.  He made no attempt to modify what had been said before, but asked in a gentle apologetic voice:  “Was that the last time you ever saw, or thought you saw, Peregrine Oakshott?”

“No.”  And here every one in court started and looked curious.

“When?”

“The 31st of October 1688, in the evening.”

“Where?”

“Looking from the window in the palace at Whitehall, I saw him, or his likeness, walking along in the light of the lantern over the great door.”

The appearance at Lambeth was then described, and that in the garden at Archfield House.  This strange cross-examination was soon over, for Charles could not endure to subject her to the ordeal, while she equally longed to be able to say something that might not damage him, and dreaded every word she spoke.  Moreover, Mr. Cowper looked exceedingly contemptuous, and made the mention of Whitehall and Lambeth a handle for impressing on the jury that the witness had been deep in the counsels of the late royal family, and that she was escorted from St. Germain by the prisoner just before he entered on foreign service.

One of the servants at Fareham was called upon to testify to the hour of his young master’s return on the fatal day.  It was long past dinner-time, he said.  It must have been about three o’clock.

Charles put in an inquiry as to the condition of his horse.  “Hard ridden, sir, as I never knew your Honour bring home Black Bess in such a pickle before.”

After a couple of young men had been called who could speak to some outbreaks of dislike to poor Peregrine, in which all had shared, the case for the prosecution was completed.  Cowper, in a speech that would be irregular now, but was permissible then, pointed out that the jealousy, dislike, and Jacobite proclivities of the Archfield family had been fully made out, that the coincidence of visits to the castle at that untimely hour had been insufficiently explained, that the condition of the remains in the vault was quite inconsistent with the evidence of the witness, Mistress Woodford, unless there were persons waiting below unknown to her, and that the prisoner had been absent from Fareham from four or five o’clock in the morning till nearly three in the afternoon.  As to the strange story she had further told, he (Mr. Cowper) was neither