n showed
the tension which had been reached.

The prisoner was well known in the locality, and so also had been his
victim. This fact accounted for the crowding of the court by friends and
acquaintances of the man murdered and his murderer, and for the
breathless interest with which every step of the legal process had been
followed. Apart from this, the case had excited much attention all over
England; the papers had been filled with its details, and a good deal of
discussion on the laws of circumstantial evidence had arisen during its
course. Not that there could be any reasonable doubt as to the
prisoner's guilt. True, nobody had seen him commit the crime. But he was
a poacher of evil character and violent disposition; he had been sent to
gaol for snaring rabbits by Mr. Vane, and had repeatedly vowed vengeance
upon him; there was a presumption against him from the very first. Then
one evening he had been seen lurking about a covert near which Mr. Vane
passed shortly afterwards; shots were heard by passers-by and Mr. Vane
was discovered lying amongst the springing bracken in the depths of a
shadowy copse, shot through the heart. A scrap of rough tweed found in
the dead man's hand was said to correspond with a torn corner of
Westwood's coat, and the murder was supposed to have been committed by
the poacher with a gun which was afterwards found in Westwood's cottage.
Several persons testified that they had seen Andrew issuing from the
copse or walking along the neighboring road, before or after the hour
when Mr. Vane met his fate, that he had his gun in his hand, that his
demeanor was strange, and that his clothes seemed to have been torn in a
scuffle. Little by little the evidence accumulated against him until it
proved irresistible. Facts which seemed small in themselves became large
and black, and charged with damnatory significance in the lawyer's
hands. The best legal talent of the country was used with crushing
effect against poor Andrew Westwood. Sydney Vane had been a popular man;
he belonged to a well-known county family, and had left a widow and
child. His friends would have moved heaven and earth to bring his
murderer to justice. After all--as was said later--the man Westwood
never had a chance. What availed his steady sullen denial against the
mass of circumstantial evidence accumulated against him? The rope was
round his neck from the time when that morsel of cloth was found clasped
close in the dead man's h