seized the flying
moment, and proposed to Miss Featherweight, who, after some hesitation,
agreed to endow him with herself and her thousands. She decided that
her future husband was a man of no common intellect, seeing that he had
long ago arrived at a conclusion which the rest of Melbourne were only
beginning to discover now, so she determined that, as soon as she
assumed marital authority, Felix, like Strephon in "Iolanthe," should
go into Parliament, and with her money and his brains she might some
day be the wife of a premier. Mr. Rolleston had no idea of the
political honours which his future spouse intended for him, and was
seated in his old place in the court, talking about the case.

"Knew he was innocent, don't you know," he said, with a complacent
smile "Fitzgerald's too jolly good-looking a fellow, and all that sort
of thing, to commit murder."

Whereupon a clergyman, happening to overhear the lively Felix make this
flippant remark, disagreed with it entirely, and preached a sermon to
prove that good looks and crime were closely connected, and that both
Judas Iscariot and Nero were beauty-men.

"Ah," said Calton, when he heard the sermon, "if this unique theory is
a true one, what a truly pious man that clergyman must be!" This
allusion to the looks of the reverend gentleman was rather unkind, for
he was by no means bad-looking. But then Calton was one of those witty
men who would rather lose a friend than suppress an epigram.

When the prisoner was brought in, a murmur of sympathy ran through the
crowded Court, so ill and worn-out he looked; but Calton was puzzled to
account for the expression of his face, so different from that of a man
whose life had been saved, or, rather, was about to be saved, for in
truth it was a foregone conclusion.

"You know who stole those papers," he thought, as he looked at
Fitzgerald, keenly, "and the man who did so is the murderer of Whyte."

The judge having entered, and the Court being opened, Calton rose to
make his speech, and stated in a few words the line of defence he
intended to take.

He would first call Albert Dendy, a watchmaker, to prove that on
Thursday night, at eight o'clock in the evening, he had called at the
prisoner's, lodgings while the landlady was out, and while there had
put the kitchen clock right, and had regulated the same. He would also
call Felix Rolleston, a friend of the prisoners, to prove that the
prisoner was not in the habit of wearing