the relative position of the parties that public opinion was strangely and strongly divided between them.  Reilly and his Cooleen Bawn had, by the unhappy peculiarity of their fate, excited the interest of all the youthful and loving part of society—­an interest which was necessarily reflected upon Whitecraft, as Reilly’s rival, independently of the hold which his forthcoming fate had upon grave and serious politicians.  Reilly’s leading counsel, Fox, a man of great judgment and ability, gave it as his opinion that in consequence of the exacerbated state of feeling produced against the Catholics by the prosecution of Whitecraft—­to appease whom, the opinion went that it was instituted—­it seemed unlikely that Reilly had a single chance.  Had his trial, he said, taken place previous to that of Whitecraft’s, he might have escaped many of the consequences of Whitecraft’s conviction; but now, should the latter be convicted, the opposing party would die in the jury-box rather than let Reilly escape.

CHAPTER XXIV.—­Jury of the Olden Time

—­Preparations—­The Scales of Justice.

At last the trial came on, and Sir Robert Whitecraft, the great champion of Protestantism—­a creed which he did not believe—­was conducted into the court-house and placed in the dock.  He was dressed in his best apparel, in order to distinguish himself from common culprits, and to give this poor external evidence of his rank, with a hope that it might tell, to a certain extent at least, upon the feeling of the jury.  When placed in the dock, a general buzz and bustle agitated the whole court His friends became alert, and whispered to each other with much earnestness, and a vast number of them bowed to him, and shook hands with him, and advised him to be cool, and keep up his spirits.  His appearance, however, was any thing but firm; his face was deadly pale, his eyes dull and cowardly, his knees trembled so much that he was obliged to support himself on the front of the dock.

At length the trial commenced, and the case having been opened by a young lawyer, a tall, intellectual-looking man, about the middle age, of pale but handsome features, and an eye of singular penetration and brilliancy, rose; and after pulling up his gown at the shoulders, and otherwise adjusting it, proceeded to lay a statement of this extraordinary case before the jury.

He dwelt upon “the pain which he felt in contemplating a gentleman of rank and vast wealth occupying the degraded position of a felon, but not, he was sorry to say, of a common felon.  The circumstances, my lord, and gentlemen of the jury, which have brought the prisoner before you this day, involve a long catalogue of crimes that as far transcend, in the hideousness of their guilt, the offences of a common felon as his rank and position in life do that of the humblest villain who ever stood before a court of justice.