When the day of trial arrived excitement was raised to a very high pitch. The court was crowded to overflowing, and large numbers of the diggers were anxiously awaiting the result in the market square in front of the court-house. The administrator was located during the trial in a private room which adjoined the court, where a _dejeuner à la fourchette_ and subsequent refreshments were plenteously dispensed to some chosen supporters of the existing state of things. The judge wore his severest frown; the government officials hovered round the precincts of the court, and with bated breath awaited the verdict, which was to clear their chief’s character from the calumnious breath of an audacious critic. But the imprisoned editor saw no reason for apprehension. Fortunately for him his case had to be decided not by a military dictator, nor yet by a single judge or magistrate, but by the sound common sense and fair play of a jury. Mr. Shippard,[62] the acting attorney general, went heart and soul into the prosecution. In a labored and somewhat silly harangue he recounted with much unction the obsolete and barbarous customs of the old Roman emperors in dealing with those whom they deemed guilty of seditious libel. As he gathered courage during the delivery of his diatribe, he overcame the natural hesitancy of his speech and became even eloquent. It is true that the act which had been attributed to the major was one which, as it had been contended for the defence in a previous case, did not amount to a morally criminal charge, and should not be proved or provable by a mere loosely kept note-book, or punished by imprisonment without option of a fine; in fact not that the major was guilty, but that the other man was morally if not legally innocent; further, it was urged that the whole matter amounted at the most to a mere technical omission of a purely formal character, which might inadvertently be committed by any usually law-abiding citizen. But the engineer did not like to “be hoist with his own petard,” and the attorney general, with “Gallio-like” unconcern for anything but his “Dryasdust” antiquities, snorted forth his anathemas against the offending editor. He introduced into his remarks a plentiful sprinkling of Roman archæology and referred with ludicrous solemnity to the old world restrictions upon the freedom of public criticism. He spoke with grave gusto of the good old times of the Emperor Zeno, when slanderous accusations against the “purple” were punishable with death. He must have forgotten that in Zeno’s time offices of state were openly bought and sold, and life and death had their price. Did the honorable attorney general wish to apply the whole theory and practice of the old Roman criminal law to the affairs of our days of steam power, telegraphs and independent press? It is difficult to say how far some men will ride their hobbies.