axham of
this hideous prison nightmare, the man of whom the Counsel for the Crown
reared up, day by day, a monstrously-distorted figure, as quite a
different person from the other innocent man whom the defending advocate
described in flowery, pathetic sentences as a martyr and the victim of an
unheard-of combination of adverse circumstances.

Things went badly. The case against the prisoner looked extremely black.
That monstrous figure of Owen Saxham, based upon an ingenious hypothesis
of guilt, and plastered over with a marvellous mixture of truths and
falsities, facts and conjectures, grew uglier and more sinister every day.

The principal witness, the bereaved husband of the hapless victim, dressed
in deep mourning and neatly handled by Counsel, evoked a display of
handkerchiefs upon his every appearance in the witness-box, from the smart
Society women seated near the Bench. Many of them had been Saxham's
patients. Several had made love to him, nearly all of them had made much
of him, and quite an appreciable number of them had asked him to be
accommodating, and render them temporarily immune against the menace of
Maternity. These had received a curt refusal, accompanied with wholesome
advice, for which they revenged themselves now, in graceful womanly
fashion, by being quite sure the wretched man was guilty. More than
possible, was it not? they whispered behind their palm-leaf fans: it was
sultry weather, and the vendors of these made little fortunes, hawking
them outside. Was it not more than possible that he had been the dead
woman's lover? The Crown Counsel improved on this idea. Wretched little
Mrs. Bough, of infinitesimal account in Life, had become through Death a
person of importance. Much was made out of the fact that she had gone to
Chilworth Street some days previously to her deplorable ending, and
remained closeted with Dr. Saxham for some time. He had supplied her with
a bottle of medicine upon her leaving--medicine of which no memorandum was
to be found in his notes for the day. She had taken the first dose then
and there. According to the testimony of the Accused, the bottle had
contained a harmless bromide sedative. Upon the oath of the Public
Analyst, the same bottle, handed by the husband of the deceased woman to
the Police upon the night of her death, and now produced in Court with two
or three doses of dark liquid remaining in it, contained a powerful
solution of ergotoxine--a much less innocent d