“Poor, dear little Rose looked very sweet and innocent, and not so much frightened as at her first examination.  She told her story of the savage way in which she had been frightened into silence.  Half the people in the court were crying, and I am sure it was a mercy that she was not driven out of her senses, or even murdered that night.  It seems that she was sent to bed early, but the wretches knowing that she always woke and talked while her mother was going to bed, the phosphoric letters were prepared to frighten her, and detain her in her room, and then Maddox growled at her when she tried to pass the door.  She was asked how she knew the growl to be Maddox’s, and she answered that she heard him cough.  Rachel will, I am sure, remember the sound of that little dry cough.  Nothing could make it clearer than that the woman had spoken the truth.  The child identified the two seals with great readiness, and then was sent back to the inn that she might not be perplexed with hearing the defence.  This, of course, was very trying to us all, since the best the counsel could do for his client was to try to pick holes in the evidence, and make the most of the general acquiescence in Mr. Williams’s guilt for all these years.  He brought forward letters that showed that Mr. Williams had been very sanguine about the project, and had written about the possibility that an advance might be needed.  Some of the letters, which both Mr. Williams and his sister owned to be in his own writing, spoke in most flourishing terms of his plans; and it was proved by documents and witnesses that the affairs were in such a state that bankruptcy was inevitable, so that there was every motive for securing a sum to live upon.  It was very miserable all the time this was going on, the whole interpretation, of Mr. Williams’s conduct seemed to be so cruelly twisted aside, and it was what every one had all along believed, his absence was made so much of, and all these little circumstances that had seemed so important were held so cheap—­one knew it was only the counsel’s representation, and yet Alison grew whiter and whiter under it.  I wish you could have heard the reply:  drawing the picture of the student’s absorption and generous confidence, and his agent’s treachery, creeping into his household, and brutally playing on the terrors of his child.

“Well, I cannot tell you all, but the judge summed up strongly for a conviction, though he said a good deal about culpable negligence almost inviting fraud, and I fear it must have been very distressing to the Williamses, but the end was that Maddox was found guilty, and sentenced to fourteen years’ penal servitude, though I am afraid they will not follow Conrade’s suggestion, and chain up a lion by his bed every night of his life.