f a season which was unusually prolific in
murder trials. The trial took place at the Lewes Assizes in a crowded
courtroom, and lasted, as we know, for sixteen days, five days of which
were given to the examination in chief and the cross-examination of the
accountants who had gone into the books of the bank.

The prosecution endeavored to establish the fact that no other person
but Frank Merrill could have access to the books, and that therefore no
other person could have falsified them or manipulated the transfer of
moneys. It cannot be said that the prosecution had wholly succeeded; for
when Brandon, the bank manager, was put into the witness box he was
compelled to admit that not only Frank, but he himself and Jasper Cole,
were in a position to reach the books.

The opening speech for the crown had been a masterly one. But that there
were many weak points in the evidence and in the assumptions which the
prosecution drew was evident to the merest tyro.

Sir George Murphy Jackson, the attorney general, who prosecuted,
attempted to dispose summarily of certain conflictions, and it had to be
confessed that his explanations were very plausible.

"The defense will tell us," he said, in that shrill, clarion tone of his
which has made to quake the hearts of so many hostile witnesses, "that
we have not accounted for the fourth man who drove up in his car ten
minutes after Merrill had entered the house, and disappeared, but I am
going to tell you my theory of that incident.

"Merrill had an accomplice who is not in custody, and that accomplice is
Rex Holland. Merrill had planned and prepared this murder, because from
some statement which his uncle had made he believed that not only was
his whole future dependent upon destroying his benefactor and silencing
forever the one man who knew the extent of his villainy, but he had in
his cold, shrewd way accurately foreseen the exact consequence of such a
shooting. It was a big criminal's big idea.

"He foresaw this trial," he said impressively; "he foresaw, gentlemen of
the jury, his acquittal at your hands. He foresaw a reaction which would
not only give him the woman he professes to love, but in consequence
place in his hands the disposal of her considerable fortune.

"Why should he shoot John Minute? you may ask; and I reply to that
question with another: What would have happened had he not shot his
uncle? He would have been a ruined man. The doors of his uncle's house
woul