Mr. and Mrs. Harold Bince entered the court-room late on Friday morning following the brief ceremony that had made them man and wife.  It had been generally supposed that to-day the case would go to the jury as the evidence was all in, and the final arguments of the attorneys, which had started the preceding day, would be concluded during the morning session.  It had been conceded that the judge’s charge would be brief and perfunctory, and there was even hope that the jury might return a verdict before the close of the afternoon session, but when Bince and his bride entered the court-room they found Torrance’s attorney making a motion for the admission of new evidence on the strength of the recent discovery of witnesses, the evidence of whom he claimed would materially alter the aspect of the case.

An hour was consumed in argument before the judge finally granted the motion.  The first of the new witnesses called was an employee of the International Machine Company.  After the usual preliminary questions the attorney for the defense asked him if he was employed in the plant on the afternoon of March 24.  The reply was in the affirmative.

“Will you tell the jury, please, of any occurrence that you witnessed there that afternoon out of the ordinary?”

“I was working at my machine,” said the witness, “when Pete Krovac comes to me and asks me to hide behind a big drill-press and watch what the assistant general manager done when he comes through the shop again.  So I hides there and I saw this man Bince come along and drop an envelope beside Krovac’s machine, and after he left I comes out as Krovac picks it up, and I seen him take some money out of it.”

“How much money?” asked the attorney.

“There was fifty dollars there.  He counted it in front of me.”

“Did he say what it was for?”

“Yes, he said Bince gave it to him to croak this fellow”—­nodding toward Jimmy.

“What fellow?” asked the attorney.  “You mean Mr. Torrance, the defendant?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And what else?  What happened after that?”

“Krovac said he’d split it with me if I’d go along and help him.”

“Did you?”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

“The guy beat up Krovac and come near croaking me, and got away.”

“That is all,” said the attorney.

The prosecuting attorney, whose repeated objections to the testimony of the witness had been overruled, waived cross-examination.

Turning to the clerk, “Please call Stephen Murray,” said Jimmy’s attorney.

Murray, burly and swaggering, took the witness chair.  The attorney handed him a letter.  It was the letter that Murray had written Bince enclosing the supposed I.W.W. threat.

“Did you ever see that before?” he asked.

Murray took the letter and read it over several times.  He was trying to see in it anything which could possibly prove damaging to him.