nd placed it
in a small locket which he put in his bosom.

"Now," said the _Cooleen Bawn_, "I am ready to go."

She was then conducted to the room to which we have alluded, where she
met Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Hastings, both of whom she found in tears--for
they had been in the gallery, and witnessed all that had happened. They
both embraced her tenderly, and attempted to console her as well as they
could; but a weight like death, she said, pressed upon her heart, and
she begged them not to distract her by their sympathy, kind and generous
as she felt it to be, but to allow her to sit, and nurture her own
thoughts until she could hear the verdict of the jury. Mrs. Hastings
returned to the gallery, and arrived there in time to hear the touching
and brilliant speech of Fox, which we are not presumptuous enough to
imagine, much less to stultify ourselves by attempting to give. He
dashed the charge of Reilly's theft of the jewels to pieces--not a
difficult task, after the evidence that had been given; and then dwelt
upon the loves of this celebrated pair with such force and eloquence
and pathos that the court was once more melted into tears. The closing
speech by the leading counsel against Reilly was bitter; but the gist
of it turned upon the fact of his having eloped with a ward of Chancery,
contrary to law; and he informed the jury that no affection--no consent
upon the part of any young lady under age was either a justification of,
or a protection against, such an abduction as that of which Reilly had
been guilty. The state of the law at the present time, he assured them,
rendered it a felony to marry a Catholic and a Protestant together; and
he then left the case in the hands, he said, of an honest Protestant
jury.

The judge's charge was brief. He told the jury that they could not
convict the prisoner on the imputed felony of the jewels; but that the
proof of his having taken away Miss Folliard from her father's house,
with--as the law stood--her felonious abduction, for the purpose of
inveigling her into an unlawful marriage with himself, was the subject
for their consideration. Even had he been a Protestant, the law could
afford him no protection in the eye of the Court of Chancery.

The jury retired; but their absence from their box was very brief.
Unfortunately, their foreman was cursed with a dreadful hesitation in
his speech, and, as he entered, the Clerk of the Crown said:

"Well, gentlemen, have you agreed in