On the 10th December 1836, the Lord Ordinary issued his note, pointing out the evidence that was deficient: "The prisoner admits that he left the country immediately afterwards, and went to Paris. Where he went to then, he does not tell; under what name he went, he does not tell; where he got his passport has not been discovered, because he concealed the name under which he travelled. He continued in Paris till the ensuing August, when he returned, as he says, to Scotland, to be present at the Peers' election, and there he voted. He then despatched his son to Paris, and _he_ returned with the map (which you are _now_, in considering the case in this view, to assume to be a fabrication) in the month of October, having all these documents written or pasted upon it." Lord Meadowbank proceeded to point out a circumstance "of the last importance to this branch of the case," which "had been lost sight of by the prisoner's counsel, and had not attracted the attention of the counsel for the Crown." And certainly the judge was right. This was the "circumstance" in question. One of the documents pasted on the back of the map was a portion of the envelope in which the supposed letter of John of Antrim (John No. 2) had been enclosed; and on this envelope was the impression of a _seal_. Now, in the prisoner's judicial examination before the Lord Ordinary, (the step admitted by Mr Swinton to have been "unusual,") he was shown the parchment packet contained in the De Porquet packet, indorsed, "Some of my wife's family papers;" and the seal attached "was an impression of his _grandfather's seal_ (John No. 3); he had not seen that seal later than the year 1825; it is in the possession of my sister, Lady Elizabeth Pountney." The judge then pointed out to the jury a fact which he had himself discovered, that the impression of the seal on this packet and that on the envelope on the map _were identical_--a fact, indeed, which the prisoner himself had admitted in another part of his examination. "Now, gentlemen," continued Lord Meadowbank, "supposing there was not another tittle of evidence in the case to connect the prisoner with these proceedings, see what this amounts to. You find a link in his pedigree wanting in December 1836. Immediately after this has been pointed out he is in Paris, and stays there till August. During this short interval he is brought into immediate and close connection with this mass of fabrications, of fabrications of no earthly use or moment to any human being but himself, and having among them _the impression of that seal which he admits to be in the possession of his own sister_. Gentlemen, suppose that the name of Mademoiselle le Normand had never been heard of in this case, I leave it to you to consider, whether the irresistible inference be not, that that seal could have been appended only by the person in possession of it, and, at least, that that person was within his own domestic circle!"