"Were you and the prisoner on good terms?" _Ryder._ On the best of terms. She was always a good and liberal mistress to me. _Wiltshire._ I will not prolong your sufferings. You may go down. _The Judge._ But you will not leave the court till this trial is ended. I have grave doubts whether I ought not to commit you. Unfortunately for the prisoner, Ryder was not the last witness for the Crown. The others that followed were so manifestly honest that it would have been impolitic to handle them severely. The prisoner, therefore, put very few questions to them; and, when the last witness went down, the case looked very formidable. The evidence for the Crown being now complete, the judge retired for some refreshment; and the court buzzed like a hum of bees. Mrs. Gaunt's lips and throat were parched; and her heart quaked. A woman of quite the lower order thrust forth a great arm, and gave her an orange. Mrs. Gaunt thanked her sweetly: and the juice relieved her throat. Also this bit of sympathy was of good omen, and did her heart good. She buried her face in her hands, and collected all her powers for the undertaking before her. She had noted down the exact order of her topics, but no more. The judge returned; the crier demanded silence; and the prisoner rose, and turned her eyes modestly but steadily upon those who held her life in their hands: and, true to the wisdom of her sex, the first thing she aimed at was--to please. "My lord, and you gentlemen of the jury, I am now to reply to a charge of murder, founded on a little testimony, and a good deal of false, but, I must needs say, reasonable conjecture. "I am innocent; but unlike other innocent persons who have stood here before me, I have no man to complain of. "The magistrates who committed me proceeded with due caution and humanity: they weighed my hitherto unspotted reputation, and were in no hurry to prejudge me; here, in this court, I have met with much forbearance; the learned counsel for the Crown has made me groan under his abilities; that was his duty; but he said from the first he would do nothing hard, and he has kept his word; often he might have stopped me; I saw it in his face: but, being a gentleman and a Christian, as well as a learned lawyer, methinks he said to himself, 'this is a poor gentlewoman pleading for her life; let her have some little advantage.' As for my lord, he has promised to be my counsel, so far as his high station, and duty to the Crown, admit; and he has supported and consoled me more than once with words of justice, that would not, I think, have encouraged a guilty person, but have comforted and sustained me beyond expression. So then I stand here, the victim, not of man's injustice, but of deceitful appearances, and of honest, but hasty and loose conjectures. "These conjectures I shall now sift, and hope to show you how hollow they are.