E CROWN.

'May it please your Lordship,

'Gentlemen of the jury, I am merely repeating a commonplace when I say
that I rise to address you under a very heavy sense of responsibility.
As you have heard, the prisoner at the bar is charged with the crime
of wilful murder. It is now my duty, acting on behalf of the Crown, to
tell you how that crime was committed, according to the view which I
have to ask you to take; and to bring before you the witnesses whose
evidence, if you believe it, goes to establish the guilt of the
accused.'

Thus Mr. Prescott. It was the third day of the assizes. On the Tuesday
afternoon, after a true bill had been found, Mr. Justice Buller had
announced that he should set apart this day for the trial of the
great case. The court had opened at ten o'clock. It was crammed to
suffocation. The intensest excitement, whetted by the interval of
delay, reigned supreme. All eyes were strained towards the dock as the
words were uttered:

'Put up Eleanor Margaret Owen.'

Another moment and she stood before them. Clothed in black from head
to foot, pale as a lily, and trembling in every limb, she sank upon
the chair behind her, and covered her face with her hands.

A great throb of sympathy shook the court. Sobs were heard. The most
prejudiced of those who had bandied her name about for the past few
weeks felt a dim sense of shame. Only a few out of all those present
were unmoved: the judge, schooled to conceal all trace of emotion,
nay, schooled to stifle it as it rose; the jury, too overcome by the
duty thrust upon them to be just then alive to what was happening; the
counsel on both sides, who, for different reasons, forbore as long as
they could from looking at the dock.

She was beautiful. All the suffering she had gone through had not
been able to affect that, unless to render her beauty more spiritual
and delicate. Her hair of that light glistening brown which is best
known as golden; her drooping eyes of deepest blue; her wide, square
forehead, unshaded by that device of ugliness, the artificial fringe
of hair; the full, open lips; the rounded chin--every mark of a
certain order of loveliness was there.

And she wore no veil. Some of the women present condemned her for
that. The matron of the prison had besought her to use one. Her answer
was decisive. She had never put a veil on since childhood, and she
would not wear one now. She would not shrink beneath a false charge.
She would show h