e
boys extremely to see some of the old jurymen peering at them with their
glasses. He was asked where he was on the 7th of September (the date of
the letter), and he referred to some notes of his own, which enabled him
to state that on the 6th he had come back to Prague from a village with
a horrible Bohemian name--all cs and zs--which I will not attempt to
write, though much depended on the number of the said letters.

"The rest of the examination must have been very distressing, for
Maddox's counsel pushed him hard about his reasons for not returning to
defend himself, and he was obliged to tell how ill his wife was, and how
terrified; and they endeavoured to make that into an admission that he
thought himself liable. They tried him with bits of the handwriting, and
he could not always tell which were his own;--but I think every one must
have been struck with his honourable scrupulosity in explaining every
doubt he had.

"Other people were called in about the writing, but Alison Williams was
the clearest of all. She was never puzzled by any scrap they showed her,
and, moreover, she told of Maddox having sent for her brother's address,
and her having copied it from a letter of Mrs. Williams's, which she
produced, with the wrong spelling, just as it was in the forgery. The
next day had come a letter from the brother, which she showed, saying
that they were going to leave the place sooner than they had intended,
and spelling it right. She gave the same account of the seals, and
nothing ever seemed to disconcert her. My boys were so much excited
about their 'own Miss Williams,' that I was quite afraid they would
explode into a cheer.

"That poor woman whom we used to call Mrs. Rawlins told her sad story
next. She is much worn and subdued, and Mr. Grey was struck with
the change from the fierce excitement she showed when she was first
confronted with Maddox, after her own trial; but she held fast to the
same evidence, giving it not resentfully, but sadly and firmly, as if
she felt it to be her duty. She, as you know, explained how Maddox
had obtained access to Mr. Williams's private papers, and how she had,
afterwards, found in his possession the seal ring, and the scraps of
paper in his patron's writing. A policeman produced them, and the seal
perfectly filled the wax upon the forged letter. The bits of paper
showed that Maddox had been practising imitating Mr. Williams's
writing. It all seemed most distinct, but stil