with those who, from present appearances, are likely to condemn me.  I call upon him, may it please your honor, as matter of right, that he should be sworn to this particular.  This, your honor will perceive, if my assertion be true, is the smallest justice which he can do me; beyond this I will ask and suggest nothing—­leaving it to your own mind how far the license of his profession should be permitted to one who thus not only abandons, but betrays and misrepresents his client.”

The youth was silent, and Pippin rose to speak in his defence.  Without being sworn, he admitted freely that such a confession had not been made, but that he had inferred the killing from the nature of the testimony, which he thought conclusive on the point; that his object had been to suggest a probable difficulty between the parties, in which he would have shown Forrester as the aggressor.  He bungled on for some time longer in this manner, but, as he digressed again into the defence of the accused, Ralph again begged to interrupt him.

“I think it important, may it please your honor, that the gentleman should be sworn as to the simple fact which he has uttered. I want it on record, that, at some future day, the few who have any interest in my fate should feel no mortifying doubts of my innocence when reminded of the occurrence—­which this strange admission, improperly circulated, might otherwise occasion.  Let him swear, your honor, to the fact:  this, I think, I may require.”

After a few moments of deliberation, his honor decided that the demand was one of right, strictly due, not merely to the prisoner and to the abstract merits of the case, but also to the necessity which such an event clearly occasioned, of establishing certain governing principles for restraining those holding situations so responsible, who should so far wilfully betray their trusts.  The lawyer was made to go through the humiliating process, and then subjected to a sharp reprimand from the judge; who, indeed, might have well gone further, in actually striking his name from the rolls of court.

It was just after this interesting period in the history of the trial—­and when Pippin, who could not be made to give up the case, as Ralph had required, was endeavoring to combat with the attorney of the state some incidental points of doctrine, and to resist their application to certain parts of the previously, recorded testimony—­that our heroine, Lucy Munro, attended by her trusty squire, Bunce, made her appearance in the courthouse.

She entered the hall more dead than alive.  The fire was no longer in her eye—­a thick haze had overspread its usually rich and lustrous expression; her form trembled with the emotion—­the strong and struggling emotion of her soul; and fatigue had done much toward the general enervation of her person.  The cheek was pale with the innate consciousness; the lips were blanched, and slightly parted, as if wanting in the muscular exercise which could bring them together.  She tottered forward to the stand upon which the witnesses were usually assembled, and to which her course had been directed, and for a few moments after her appearance in the courtroom her progress had been as one stunned by a sudden and severe blow.