ch proceedings had been instituted, spread a kind of
blankness through the court; men frowned thoughtfully, and one or two
ladies shed furtive tears. Even the counsel for the defence, it was
afterward remembered, looked grave, sympathetic, and concerned, in
response to the brief but significant and moving sentences with which
his eminent opponent opened the case. It is not my duty to report the
trial for any newspaper; I will therefore spare myself more than the
most general references; but the facts undoubtedly were that a safe in
the strong room of the bank had been opened between certain hours on a
certain night and its contents abstracted; that young Ormiston, cashier
of the bank, was sleeping, or supposed to be sleeping, upon the premises
at this time, during the illness of the junior whose usual duty it was;
and that the Crown was in possession of certain evidence which would be
brought forward to prove collusion with the burglary on the part of
the defendant, collusion to cover deficits for which he could be held
responsible. In a strain almost apologetic, Mr Cruickshank explained
to the jury the circumstances which led the directors to the suspicion
which they now believed only too regrettably well founded. These
consisted in the fact that the young man was known to be living beyond
his means, and so to be constantly visited by the temptation to such
a crime; the special facilities which he controlled for its commission
and, in particular, the ease and confidence with which the actual
operation had been carried out, arguing no fear of detection on the
part of the burglars, no danger of interference from one who should have
stood ready to defend with his life the property in his charge, but who
would shortly be seen to have been toward it, first, a plunderer in his
own person, and afterward the accomplice of plunderers to conceal
his guilt. Examination showed the safe to have been opened with the
dexterity that demands both time and coolness; and the ash from a pipe
knocked out against the wall at the side of the passage offered ironical
testimony to the comfort in which the business had been done.

The lawyer gave these considerations their full weight, and it was
in dramatic contrast with the last of them that he produced the first
significant fragment of evidence against Ormiston. There had been, after
all, some hurry of departure. It was shown by a sheet of paper bearing
the mark of a dirty thumb and a hasty b