yes; I think he was.'

The jury again looked at Lewis. But that gentleman's face revealed no
emotion, except a sort of sullen wrath which had overhung it ever
since his appearance in the witness-box.

At last, when all the other witnesses had been disposed of, the
policeman was called and gave the usual routine evidence.

Mr. Pollard was rash enough to ask him:

'Who came to the station to inform the police?'

But his opponent at once objected, and the judge ruled the question
out. Mr. Lewis's indignant declaration, therefore, which Prescott had
struck out of his brief with such prompt disdain, fared equally ill in
court, and was not allowed to get to the ear of the judge or jury.

At last the evidence was gone through, and then the prosecuting
counsel stood up and made the final announcement:

'That is the case for the Crown, my lord.'

'I will adjourn for half an hour,' observed the judge, getting on his
feet.

The whole court rose with him, and in a few minutes the entire place
was empty.

CHAPTER VII.

HALF AN HOUR.

Scrambling, rushing, hurrying, squeezing, talking, laughing, and
sighing, the great throng poured out of the building and dispersed
down the streets of Abertaff. One topic was on every tongue. The fate
of the prisoner was the sole thing discussed. They weighed the
evidence, they repeated it, they distorted it. Some were violently in
favour of the prisoner, and considered half the witnesses to be
committing perjury. Others were violently against her, and could not
see, so they professed, a shadow of doubt in the case from first to
last. Others, again, in complete doubt as to how the case would end,
wisely declined to commit themselves till they had heard more of the
defence.

Then, again, these parties were subdivided into groups. There was the
ignorant group, who knew nothing about the case, and went about asking
questions of their wiser neighbours. There was the mysterious group,
who suspected many things, but said nothing, contenting themselves
with shaking their heads in corners, and suggesting that not half the
real motives of the parties to the affair had come out at all. And
there was the well-informed group of those who had watched the whole
thing from first to last, and knew more, far more, about it than the
counsel on either side, or the criminal either, for that matter.

And they were not churlish in bestowing their information, either.
There were the Lewisite partis