lisle, she there committed perjury. That she did so she herself
stated on oath in that evidence which she gave before the magistrate
when my client was committed, and which has, as I maintain,
improperly and illegally been used against my client at this trial."
Here the judge looked over his spectacles and admonished the learned
serjeant, that his argument on that subject had already been heard,
and the matter decided. "True, my lord; but my conviction of my duty
to my client compels me to revert to it. Lady Eustace committed
perjury at Carlisle, having the diamonds in her pocket at the very
moment in which she swore that they had been stolen from her. And
if justice had really been done in this case, gentlemen, it is
Lady Eustace who should now be on her trial before you, and not my
unfortunate client. Well,--what is the next that we hear of it? It
seems that she brought the diamonds up to London; but how long she
kept them there, nobody knows. It was, however, necessary to account
for them. A robbery is got up between a young woman who seems to have
been the confidential friend rather than the maid of Lady Eustace,
and that other witness whom you have heard testifying against
himself, and who is, of all the informers that ever came into my
hands, the most flippant, the most hardened, the least conscientious,
and the least credible. That they two were engaged in a conspiracy
I cannot doubt. That Lady Eustace was engaged with them, I will not
say. But I will ask you to consider whether such may not probably
have been the case. At any rate, she then perjures herself again. She
gives a list of the articles stolen from her, and omits the diamonds.
She either perjures herself a second time,--or else the diamonds, in
regard to which my client is in jeopardy, were not in the house at
all, and could not then have been stolen. It may very probably have
been so. Nothing more probable. Mr. Camperdown and the managers of
the Eustace estate had gradually come to a belief that the Carlisle
robbery was a hoax,--and, therefore, another robbery is necessary
to account for the diamonds. Another robbery is arranged, and this
young and beautiful widow, as bold as brass, again goes before the
magistrate and swears. Either the diamonds were not stolen, or else
again she commits a second perjury.

"And now, gentlemen, she is not here. She is sick forsooth at her own
castle in Scotland, and sends to us a medical certificate. But the
gentleme