testimony of Hanscom, he sympathized with
the rescuers, and expressed his sympathy in a very unguarded manner for
a man who was present, in the midst. All that day and the next, with the
vanity of a youth who has been the fortunate spectator of the great
event of the day, a fire, a hanging, or a murder, he vaunts his
connection and sympathy with the rescue. On the third day come the
arrests. He finds the Government has learned that he was present. Six
months in jail and a thousand dollars fine, is no trifle to a mechanic's
apprentice. He becomes alarmed, and offers himself as State's evidence,
and becomes a swift, a terrified, and a blinded witness for the
Government. He says he was standing in the entry by the recess that
leads to the east door and the water-closet. While there, he saw a
gentleman come along the entry and go past him into the recess, and he
thinks through the east door into the court room. If this was Mr. Davis,
he must have gone through that door, for he was in the room and left it
again a minute after. This gentleman he is sure was Mr. Davis, although
he did not then know him by name and had only seen him once. Nor was
there anything then to call his attention to a casual passer by.

Now, may it please your Honor, how long and when was Prescott at that
post? According to his own testimony, about two minutes before the
rescue began, and as soon as he saw the attempt was serious, he left
that place for the stairs. Mr. Davis, then, must have entered the east
door one or two minutes before he went out of the west door. Now, Mr.
Warren, the Deputy Marshal, testifies that he passed through the entry
into this closet, just about two minutes before the rescue, and
remembers seeing a young white man standing at the corner. To avoid the
effect of this evidence, Prescott is recalled and says he remembers also
to have seen a man come out at the east door and go into the closet, at
this moment. But here the witness made a mistake. He thought that Mr.
Warren went through the east door, but Mr. Warren says that he came
along the entry, and had not been in or out of that door. What then is
the predicament in which Prescott has involved himself? Three different
men must have gone into that recess in the short space of two minutes;
two of them at least, must have been in the closet at the same minute;
and the east door must have been opened three times upon a knock from
without.

Against this evident mistake or wilfu