e of
inveigling the girl into his workshop, which was situated on the
second floor of an extensive range of warehouses in a yard at
Nottingham. He asked her to come on the Monday morning, and when
she informed him that her lover was to come by the 12.30 train at
Nottingham Station, he said if she came at eleven she would have
plenty of time to see his invention, and then meet him. She at last
consented.

I now come to a series of facts of a sensational character. On the
Monday morning she went, according to the appointment, and was seen to
go with this man up a flight of steps which led from the yard to the
first floor. The door opened on to the landing outwardly. In about a
quarter of an hour after she was seen staggering down the steps, and
crossing the yard in the direction of the street. In the street she
fell, and was conveyed to a neighbouring house. She was afterwards
taken to a hospital.

In the course of some minutes the man himself came down the steps,
and was informed that a girl had been seen coming out of his premises
bleeding, and had been taken to a cottage.

"Was there?" said he, and walked away.

In the afternoon he was apprehended. He said he was very sorry, but
that he was showing the girl a little toy pistol, and that it had gone
off: quite accidentally. He wished to be taken to the hospital where
she was.

The magistrate in the meanwhile had been informed of the occurrence,
and with his clerk attended at the hospital to take her dying
deposition.

There was an amount of skill and ability about the prisoner which was
somewhat surprising to me, who am seldom surprised at anything.

"Did you not think it was an accident?" he asked.

The dying girl answered, "Yes."

In re-examination by the magistrate's clerk at the end of the
business, the following answer was elicited,--

"I thought it was an accident before the second shot was fired."

The extraordinary part of this story, to my mind, is that the able
counsel--and able he indeed was who defended him--treated the matter
as the most frivolous prosecution that was ever instituted. I know
that he almost laughed at the idea of murder, and, further, that the
junior counsel for the prosecution treated the charge in the same
manner, and said that, in his opinion, there was no case.

The man was indicted for wilful murder, and I am bound to say, after
reading the depositions, I could come to no other conclusion than
that he was guilty of the