sank to the ground."

"Before or after you were stabbed?"

"He stabbed me as I fell."

"Could it have been an accident?"

"Impossible, for I fell backward, and the wound was in front."

After Sydney had done with his witness, Mr. Milton took her in hand; and
this was felt by every one to be the most critical stage of the trial.
Milton did his best to shake Cora's evidence, not without a certain kind
of success. He turned her past life inside out, made her confess her
infidelity, her intemperance, her brawling in the streets, her
conviction and fine at the Hammersmith Police Court. It was all he could
do to restrain himself from getting her to acknowledge the reason of her
visit to Maple Cottage; but his instructions were too definite to be
ignored. He felt that the introduction of Miss Campion's name would have
told in favor of his client--at any rate, with the jury; and he would
not have been a zealous pleader if he had not wished to take advantage
of the point.

By this time Cora was in a rage, and she damaged herself with the jury
by giving them a specimen of her ungovernable temper. The trial had to
be suspended for a quarter of an hour, whilst she recovered from a fit
of hysterics; but it said much for her crafty shrewdness that she was
able to adhere, in the main, to the story which she had told. She was
severely cross-examined about the scene in Surrey Street, and especially
about the dagger. She feigned intense surprise at being asked and
pressed as to her having brought the weapon with her; but Mr. Milton
could not succeed in making her contradict herself.

Then the other witnesses were heard and counsel had an opportunity of
enforcing the evidence on both sides. Mr. Milton was very severe on his
learned friend for introducing matter in his opening speech, on which he
did not intend to call witnesses; but in his own mind he had recognized
the fact that there must be a verdict of guilty, and he brought out as
strongly as he could the circumstances which he thought would weigh with
the court in his client's favor. Sydney was well content with the result
of the trial as far as it had gone. There had been no reference of any
kind to his sister Lettice; and, as he knew that this was due in some
measure to the reticence of the defence, it would have argued a want of
generosity on his part to talk of the cruelty of the prisoner in
stopping his wife's allowance because she had molested him in the
street.

Th