of an impartial judge."--BURKE.

The jury were out.

They had been out four hours, but the crowd in the closely packed
court-room still kept its ranks unbroken, and even seemed to grow more
dense; for if, here and there, one person went away, two from the
waiting throng of those in the halls and about the doors immediately
pressed their way in to take the vacant place. The long warm summer day
was drawing toward its close. The tired people fanned themselves, but
would not go, because it was rumored that a decision was near.

Outside, the fair green farming country, which came up almost to the
doors, stretched away peacefully in the twilight, shading into the grays
of evening down the valley, and at the bases of the hills. The fields
were falling asleep; eight o'clock sounding from a distant church bell
seemed like a curfew and good-night.

If one had had time to think of it, the picture of the crowded
court-room, rising in that peaceful landscape, was a strange one. But no
one had time to think of it. Lights had been brought in. The summer
beetles, attracted by them, flew in through the open windows, knocked
themselves against the wall, fell to the floor, and then slowly took
wing again to repeat the process. With the coming of the lights the
crowd stirred a little, looked about, and then settled itself anew. The
prisoner's chances were canvassed again, and for the hundredth time. The
testimony of Anne Douglas had destroyed the theory which had seemed to
fill out so well the missing parts of the story; it had proved that the
supposed rival was a friend of the wife's, and that the wife loved her;
it had proved that Mrs. Heathcote was devoted to her husband, and happy
with him, up to the last hour of her life. This was much. But the
circumstantial evidence regarding the movements of the prisoner at
Timloesville remained unchanged; he was still confronted by the fact of
his having been seen on that outside stairway, by the other significant
details, and by the print of that left hand.

During this evening waiting, the city papers had come, were brought in,
and read. One of them contained some paragraphs upon a point which, in
the rapid succession of events that followed each other in the case, had
been partially overlooked--a point which the country readers cast aside
as unimportant, but which wakened in the minds of the city people
present the remembrance that they had needed the admonition.

"But if this convers