n. If everything else
connected with this case is forgotten, the recollection of that will
remain. You, and I, and all who wait upon your verdict, will in due time
pass from among the living, and leave small print behind us on the sands
of time. But her act will not die, and to it I now offer the homage of
silence, since that would best please her heroic soul, which broke the
bonds of womanly reserve only to save from an unmerited charge a falsely
arraigned brother."

The restraint and yet the fire with which Mr. Moffat uttered these simple
words, lifted all hearts and surcharged the atmosphere with an emotion
rarely awakened in a court of law. Not in my pulses alone was started the
electric current of renewed life. The jury, to a man, glowed with
enthusiasm, and from the audience rose one long and suppressed sigh of
answering feeling, which was all the tribute he needed for his
eloquence--or Carmel for her uncalculating, self-sacrificing deed. I
could have called upon the mountains to cover _me_; but--God be
praised--no one thought of me in that hour. Every throb, every thought
was for her.

At the proper moment of subsiding feeling, Mr. Moffat again raised
his voice:

"Gentlemen of the jury, you have seen point after point of the
prosecution's case demolished before your eyes by testimony which no one
has had the temerity to attempt to controvert. What is left? Mr. Fox will
tell you--three strong and unassailable facts. The ring found in the
murdered woman's casket, the remnants of the tell-tale bottle discovered
in the Cumberland stable, and the opportunity for crime given by the
acknowledged presence of the defendant on or near the scene of death. He
will harp on these facts; he will make much of them; and he will be
justified in doing so, for they are the only links remaining of the
strong chain forged so carefully against my client.

"But are these points so vital as they seem? Let us consider them, and
see. My client has denied that he dropped anything into his sister's
casket, much less the ring missing from that sister's finger. Dare you,
then, convict on this point when, according to count, ten other persons
were seen to drop flowers into this very place--any one of which might
have carried this object with it?

"And the bit of broken bottle found in or near the defendant's own
stable! Is he to be convicted on the similarity it offers to the one
known to have come from the club-house wine-vault, while a