o listen to him further,
reiterating the order that he be seated. Then with the air and manner
of a little boy sent for misbehavior from the room, Orr half turned,
hesitated, turned back, and through the exercise of guile unique and
his own, succeeded in re-engaging the Court in conversation,
protesting his respect, denying his contumacy and presently he was
continuing the very objection because of which he had been told to sit
down. He did sit down, but long after, when he was ready, when he had
succeeded in having his say and his way. Then when at last he did sit
down it was with an air of mastery that would have become Napoleon at
Marengo. At the moment he was not a lawyer merely, he was an actor,
quasi-Shakespearian, a compound of irony and good humor, Falstaff and
Mercutio in one.

All this, however, was, to vary the metaphor, but the preliminary
canter. That Loftus had been killed was shown and admitted. But it had
not been shown nor was it admitted that the defendant was the man.
This defect a star witness was to repair. The star was Harris.

Yet, though a star, he looked ghastly. Whether ill or not, he was at
least ill at ease. The smug, household-servant air had gone. He seemed
to have come from turmoils in Tatterdemalia. He was bruised, dirty,
unshorn. But the story which he had brought to the _Chronicle_ he
repeated, with embellishments at that. After retailing the tale,
precising the motive and elaborating on it, he declared that the love
of the defendant's wife for Loftus was common talk--evidence which,
though hearsay, Orr indifferently let pass.

Then, after identifying a pistol as the property of Annandale--an
exhibit marked A which Peacock had already tried but, held up by Orr,
had not wholly succeeded in fitting to the crime--Harris swore that on
the night of the murder, at five minutes after twelve, in the room
which he occupied at the top of Annandale's house and which overlooked
Gramercy Park, he heard a shot; that going to the window he looked
out, that he could distinguish nothing, but that going then to the
hall he heard someone coming in the house and looking down saw the
defendant enter.

"Ha!" said Orr, taking him in hand, or rather, by the throat. For he
made no attempt at ordinary amenities. He questioned him ferociously,
with an air of personal hatred, with an air of saying, "Damn you, I
have got it in for you now."

"What is your name?" he asked.

"Richard Harris, sir."

Orr poun