During the long hours of the four days' trial at Westminster, my sister and I used to walk up and down the great hall, watching for any one to come out with any news of how the case was going on. Melancholy figures we must have looked, nearly always alone, dressed in black gowns--for our mother had died suddenly in the midst of all this--and very frightened at heart at what might happen. There was one person who used invariably to step out of his way to speak to us as he passed up the great hall to his place in the House of Commons, and that was Joseph Biggar, the Member for Cavan. A little kindness at an hour such as this makes an impression on the mind that nothing can efface, and my sister and I never afterwards heard Mr Biggar's name mentioned without recalling how he thus kindly went out of his way to say a pleasant word to a couple of girls miserably walking up and down outside those Law Courts at Westminster. On the fourth day we were summoned inside the Court. The jury had retired, and every one was so sure of a verdict for the defence, that my father thought we should like to hear it--for in spite of all his worries and anxieties, he could yet think of us at such a moment. When the verdict came it was a shock, the more so that until a few minutes before, when an idea of the truth somehow reached the Court, a favourable one had been anticipated. On the first day (Monday) of the trial, in giving the history of the Knowlton pamphlet, Mrs Besant, as a matter of course, mentioned that it had been sold by Messrs Holyoake & Co., saying, "One of the firm is Mr George Jacob Holyoake, whose name is probably well known to you. The other is Austin Holyoake," and further, "from Mr Holyoake the book went into the hands of a Mr C. Watts." On Wednesday, the third day, a communication from Mr G. J. Holyoake appeared in the _Times_, in which he attempted to explain away his connection with the pamphlet, adding, moreover, that after the Bristol trial he advised Mr Watts to discontinue its publication. As the only effect of this letter could be to injure the defendants, it may be imagined that my father did not take it as a very kindly act.[9] Indeed, Mrs Besant put it that the letter was one "carefully calculated to prejudice the jury against us, and sent to the very paper with which one of our jurymen[10] was connected." As Mr Holyoake had been silent so long, "silent while he sold it, silent while he profited by the sale, would it have been too great an exercise of self-control," she asked, "if he had maintained his silence for two days longer?"