olen this two thousand pounds than their own
upright and sagacious foreman.

A sigh of relief was uttered from a hundred gentle breasts. "We are
coming to something at last," it seemed to say. A hundred fair faces
looked at Mr. Balais--who was growing gray and wrinkled, and found every
new performance of his pantomime harder and harder--as though they could
have kissed him, nevertheless. "Yes, gentlemen of the jury, that money
was given to him by the prosecutor's daughter with her own hand."

A murmur of satisfaction ran round the court-house.

There _was_ a romance--a love-story--in the case, then, after all.

Mr. Balais concluded a most energetic speech with a peroration of great
brilliancy, in which Richard and Harry were exhibited like a
transparency in the bright colors of Youth, and Hope, and Passion, and
finally sat down amidst what would have been a burst of applause but for
the harsh voice of the usher nipping it in the bud by proclaiming
silence.

There was no need for his doing that when Mr. Balais jumped up to his
feet again, as though he were on springs, and called for Harry
Trevethick. The judge was taking snuff at the time; and such was the
stillness that you could hear the overplus falling on the paper before
him on which he wrote down his notes. There was a minute's delay, during
which every eye was fixed upon the witness-box, and then Harry appeared.
She was very pale, and wore a look of anxious timidity; but a bright
spot came into her cheeks as she turned her face to the prisoner in the
dock, and smiled upon him. From that moment Richard felt that he was
safe. Guarded as he was, and still in peril, he forgot his danger, and
once more resolved that he would cleave to this tender creature, to whom
he was about to owe his safety, to his life's end.

Harry was simply yet attractively attired in a pale violet silk dress,
with a straw bonnet trimmed with the same modest color. It was observed,
with reference to this and to the innocence and gentleness of her
expression, that she looked like a dove; and a dove she seemed to
Richard, bringing him the signal that the flood was abating, the deep
waters of which had so nearly overwhelmed both soul and body. Even the
judge, as Mr. Weasel had foretold, regarded her through his double
glasses with critical approval; for a most excellent judge he was--of
female attractions.

Mr. Balais smiled triumphantly at the jury. "Did I not tell you," he
seemed to say,