hat
any artifice can make me appear such. I will not have counsel."

The Attorney-General here in a low voice addressed the Bench, and
suggested that although the prisoner might not himself select a
defender, yet the interests of justice generally requiring that the
witnesses should be cross-examined, it would be well if the Court would
appoint some one to that duty.

The judge repeated the suggestion aloud, adding his perfect concurrence
in its nature, and inviting the learned Bar to lend a volunteer in the
cause; when a voice called out, "I will willingly accept the office, my
Lord, with your permission."

"Very well, Mr. Clare Jones," replied the judge; and that gentleman,
of whom we have so long lost sight, advanced to the front of the bar,
beside the dock.

Cashel, during this scene, appeared like one totally uninterested in all
that was going forward; nor did he even turn his head towards where
his self-appointed advocate was standing. As the names of the jury were
called over, Jones closely scrutinized each individual, keenly inquiring
from what part of the county he came--whether he had resided as a tenant
on the Cashel estate--and if he had, on any occasion, expressed himself
strongly on the guilt or innocence of the accused. To all these details
Roland listened with an interest the novelty suggested, but, it was
plain to see, without any particle of that feeling which his own
position might have called for. The jury were at length impanelled, and
the trial began.

Few, even among the most accomplished weavers of narrative, can equal
the skill with which a clever lawyer details the story of a criminal
trial. The orderly sequence in which the facts occur; the neat equipoise
in which matters are weighed; the rigid insistence upon some points, the
insinuated probabilities and the likelihood of others,--are all arranged
and combined with a masterly power that more discursive fancies would
fail in.

Events and incidents that to common intelligence appear to have no
bearing on the case, arise, like unexpected witnesses, at intervals, to
corroborate this, or to insinuate that. Time, place, distance, locality,
the laws of light and sound, the phenomena of science, are all invoked,
not with the abstruse pedantry of a bookworm, but with the ready-witted
acuteness of one who has studied mankind in the party-colored page of
real life.

To any one unaccustomed to these efforts, the effect produced is almost
miracu