to leave so easy a trail, and he jumped to the conclusion that she would be going to her married brother in America, and had gone to Devonport merely to bid her aunt farewell.  He determined therefore to get to Liverpool, without wasting time at Devonport, to institute inquiries.  Not suspecting the delay in the transit of the letter, he thought he might yet stop her, even at the landing-stage or on the tender.  Unfortunately his cab went slowly in the fog, he missed the first train, and wandered about brooding disconsolately in the mist till the second.  At Liverpool his suspicious, excited demeanour procured his momentary arrest.  Since then the thought of the lost girl has haunted and broken him.  That is the whole, the plain, and the sufficing story.”

The effective witnesses for the defence were, indeed, few.  It is so hard to prove a negative.  There was Jessie’s aunt, who bore out the statement of the counsel for the defence.  There were the porters who saw him leave Euston by the 7.15 train for Liverpool, and arrive just too late for the 5.15; there was the cabman (2138), who drove him to Euston just in time, he (witness) thought, to catch the 5.15 A.M.  Under cross-examination, the cabman got a little confused; he was asked whether, if he really picked up the prisoner at Bow Railway Station at about 4.30, he ought not to have caught the first train at Euston.  He said the fog made him drive rather slowly, but admitted the mist was transparent enough to warrant full speed.  He also admitted being a strong trade unionist, SPIGOT, Q.C., artfully extorting the admission as if it were of the utmost significance.  Finally, there were numerous witnesses—­of all sorts and conditions—­to the prisoner’s high character, as well as to Arthur Constant’s blameless and moral life.

In his closing speech on the third day of the trial, Sir CHARLES pointed out with great exhaustiveness and cogency the flimsiness of the case for the prosecution, the number of hypotheses it involved, and their mutual interdependence.  Mrs. Drabdump was a witness whose evidence must be accepted with extreme caution.  The jury must remember that she was unable to dissociate her observations from her inferences, and thought that the prisoner and Mr. Constant were quarrelling merely because they were agitated.  He dissected her evidence, and showed that it entirely bore out the story of the defence.  He asked the jury to bear in mind that no positive evidence (whether of cabmen or others) had been given of the various and complicated movements attributed to the prisoner on the morning of December 4th, between the hours of 5.25 and 7.15 A.M., and that the most important witness on the theory of the prosecution—­he meant, of course, Miss Dymond—­had not been produced.  Even if she were dead, and her body were found, no countenance would be given to the theory of the prosecution, for the mere conviction that her lover had deserted her would be a sufficient explanation of her suicide.