died a few hours after my return home, where I remained for a week, nor did I suggest flight, though I gladly availed myself of my father’s suggestion of sending me abroad with a tutor.  Let me add, to remove misconception, that I visited Paris because my tutor, the Reverend George Fellowes, one of the Fellows of Magdalen College expelled by the late King, and now Rector of Portchester, had been asked to provide for Miss Woodford’s return to her home, and he is here to testify that I never had any concern with politics.  I did indeed accompany him to St. Germain, but merely to find the young gentlewoman, and in the absence of the late King and Queen, nor did I hold intercourse with any other person connected with their Court.  After escorting her to Ostend, I went to Hungary to serve in the army of our ally, the Emperor, against the Turks, the enemies of all Christians.  After a severe wound, I have come home, knowing nothing of conspiracies, and I was taken by surprise on arriving here at Winchester at finding that my cousin was on his trial for the unfortunate deed into which I was betrayed by haste and passion, but entirely without premeditation or intent to do more than to defend the young lady.  So that I plead that my crime does not amount to murder from malicious intent; and likewise, that those who charge me with the actual death of Peregrine Oakshott should prove him to be dead.”

Charles’s first witness was Mrs. Lang, his late wife’s ‘own woman,’ who spared him many questions by garrulously declaring ‘what a work’ poor little Madam had made about the rose-coloured sarcenet, causing the pattern to be searched out as soon as she came home from the bonfire, and how she had ‘gone on at’ her husband till he promised to give it to Mistress Anne, and how he had been astir at four o’clock in the morning, and had called to her (Mrs. Lang) to look to her mistress, who might perhaps get some sleep now that she had her will and hounded him out to go over to Portchester about that silk.

Nothing was asked of this witness by the prosecution except the time of Mr. Archfield’s return.  The question of jealousy was passed over.

Of the pond apparition nothing was said.  Anne had told Charles of it, but no one could have proved its identity but Sedley, and his share in it was too painful to be brought forward.  Three other ghost seers were brought forward:  Mrs. Fellowes’s maid, the sentry, and the sexton; but only the sexton had ever seen Master Perry alive, and he would not swear to more than that it was something in his likeness; the sentry was already bound to declare it something unsubstantial; and the maid was easily persuaded into declaring that she did not know what she had seen or whether she had seen anything.

There only remained Mr. Fellowes to bear witness of his pupil’s entire innocence of political intrigues, together with a voluntary testimony addressed to the court, that the youth had always appeared to him a well-disposed but hitherto boyish lad, suddenly sobered and rendered thoughtful by a shock that had changed the tenor of his mind.