ne of half-savage jocularity,
excited a strange mixture of emotion in those who heard it, which
ultimately ended in half-subdued laughter throughout the court,
repressing which at once, the judge gravely reprimanded the prisoner
for the aspersions he had thrown on the administration of justice, and
appointed one of the most distinguished members of the bar to conduct
his defence.

It was late in the day when the Crown counsel rose to open his case. His
address was calm and dispassionate. It was divested of what might seem
to be any ungenerous allusion to the peculiar character or temperament
of the accused, but it promised an amount of circumstantial evidence
which, were the credit of the witnesses to stand unimpeached, would be
almost impossible to reconcile with anything short of the guilt of the
prisoner in the dock.

"We shall show you, gentlemen of the jury," said he, "first of all that
there was a manifest motive for this crime,--at least, what to a man of
the prisoner's temper and passions might adequately represent a motive.
We shall produce evidence before you to prove his arrival secretly in
Dublin, where he lodged in an obscure and little-frequented locality,
avoiding all occasion of recognition, and passing under an assumed name.
We shall show you that on each evening he was accustomed to visit an
acquaintance--a solicitor, whom we shall produce on the table--whose
house is situated at the very opposite end of the city; returning from
which, it was his habit to pass through Stephen's Green, and that he
took this path on the night of the murder, having parted from his friend
a little before midnight. We shall next show you that the traces of
the footsteps correspond exactly with his boots, even to certain
peculiarities in their make. And, lastly, we shall prove his immediate
and secret departure from the capital on this very night in question;
his retirement to a distant part of the country, where he remained till
within a few days previous to his arrest.

"Such are the brief outlines of a case, the details of which will
comprise a vast number of circumstances,--slight, perhaps, and trivial
individually, but which, taken collectively, and considered in regard to
their bearing on the matter before us, will make up a mass of evidence
that the most sceptical cannot reject.

"Although it may not be usual to advert to the line of conduct which the
prisoner has adopted, in refusing to name a counsel for his def