“Only one word more. I had naturally intended to place my client upon the stand, and let him justify himself by his own word of mouth. But, unfortunately, I am not able to do so, because morally and physically he is prostrated and unfitted for sustaining the strain of an examination. But after all, if you will for a moment imagine yourselves in Mr. Neuman’s position, you can conceive that his defense must necessarily be of a passive, not of an active, kind. In his position what could you say? Why, only that you were ignorant of the whole transaction, and innocent despite appearances, and as much at loss for a solution of the mystery involving it as his honor himself. This is what Neuman would say were he able to go upon the stand. But one thing more he would say. He would impugn the veracity of the Marshalls. He would maintain that they lied in toto when they swore to his second entrance. He would tell you that when he left the house in Fifty-first street at midnight, he went directly home and to his bed, and that he returned no more until the next morning. And he would leave you to choose between his story and that of Mr. and Mrs. Marshall. My opponent will ask, ‘Why not prove an alibi, then?’ Because, when Mr. Neuman returned to his lodging-house late that night, every body, as might have been expected, was asleep. He encountered no one in the hall or on the stairs. He mounted straight to his own bed-chamber and went to bed. “I trust the matter to your discretion. I am sure that you will weigh it carefully and conscientiously. You will realize that the life of a fellow man hangs upon your verdict, and you will deliberate well, if there be not, on the whole, a reasonable doubt in his favor. You will, I am confident, in no uncertain mind consign Ernest Neuman to the grave of a felon.” The district-attorney’s address was florid and rhetorical. It lasted about two hours. He resumed the evidence. He said that an ordinary process of elimination would suffice to fasten the guilt upon the prisoner at the bar. The gist of his argument was that as Neuman had been the only person in the victim’s company at the time of the commission of the crime, he was consequently the only person who by a physical possibility could be guilty. He warned the jury against allowing their sympathies to interfere with their judgment, and read at length from a law book respecting the value of circumstantial proof. He ridiculed Epstein’s impeachment of the Marshalls, and added that even without their testimony the doctor’s story and the police-captain’s story, coupled with my own “eloquent silence,” were conclusive. It was the obvious duty of the jury to convict. The judge delivered his charge, dealing with the legal aspect of the case. Epstein rose again. “I request your honor,” he said, “to charge that in the event of the jurymen finding that there is a reasonable doubt in Neuman’s favor, they must acquit.” “I so charge,” assented the judge.