burly barrister's
achievement was simply this,--that for the moment a sort of sympathy
was excited on behalf of the prisoners by the disapprobation which
was aroused against the wicked man who hadn't cared twopence.
Sympathy, like electricity, will run so quick that no man may stop
it. If sympathy might be made to run through the jury-box there might
perchance be a man or two there weak enough to entertain it to the
prejudice of his duty on that day. The hopes of the burly barrister
in this matter did not go further than that.

Then there was another man put forward who had seen neither of the
prisoners, but had seen the cart and pony at Pycroft Common, and had
known that the cart and pony were for the time in the possession of
the Grinder. He was questioned by the burly barrister about himself
rather than about his evidence; and when he had been made to own that
he had been five times in prison, the burly barrister was almost
justified in the look he gave to the jury, and he shook his head as
though in sorrow that his learned friend on the other side should
have dared to bring such a man as that before them as a witness.

Various others were brought up and examined before poor Carry's turn
had come; and on each occasion, as one after another was dismissed
from the hands of the burly barrister, here one crushed and
confounded, there another loud and triumphant, her heart was almost
in her throat. And yet though she so dreaded the moment when it
should come, there was a sense of wretched disappointment in that
she was kept waiting. It was now between four and five, and whispers
began to be rife that the Crown would not finish their case that day.
There was much trouble and more amusement with the old woman who
had been Trumbull's housekeeper. She was very deaf; but it had been
discovered that there was an old friendship between her and the
Grinder's mother, and that she had at one time whispered the fact of
the farmer's money into the ears of Mrs. Burrows of Pycroft Common.
Deaf as she was, she was made to admit this. Mrs. Burrows was also
examined, but she would admit nothing. She had never heard of the
money, or of Farmer Trumbull, or of the murder,--not till the world
heard of it, and she knew nothing about her son's doings or comings
or goings. No doubt she had given shelter to a young woman at the
request of a friend of her son, the young woman paying her ten
shillings a week for her board and lodging. That young