After he had done with Zeno’s time, however, he was compelled to admit that capital punishment for the offense under consideration had been “mercifully commuted to a public flogging,” and seemed to imply that some punishment of that nature would not be inapplicable to the case of the editor who had spoken so severely of his patron. In this style he poured forth the vials of his wrath until the amazed crowd of listening diggers were agape with astonishment at the righteous (and loudly expressed) indignation of the prosecuting barrister. The audience might not unreasonably have expected that the next authority to be quoted by the excited counsel would be the customs and maxims of that “beauteous, implacable tyrant,” the lamented Nero. [Illustration] An amusing incident occurred when the court rose for luncheon. The editor was of course a prisoner, the responsibility of his sureties while he was out on bail having ceased upon his appearing and pleading to the indictment, but the judge, who, it is only fair to state, treated him with marked courtesy throughout the trial, permitted him to leave the court _en parole_, as it were, for luncheon. With the jury it was quite different. The acting attorney general did not want to let them mix with the outside crowd who had already expressed _their_ opinion of the proceedings pretty plainly, and accordingly at his instigation, or at least with his concurrence, the hapless jurors were locked up _sans ceremonie_ until after luncheon. Notwithstanding all the perverse ingenuity of the prosecuting counsel, he could not persuade the jury to convict the prisoner. After a short deliberation the jury returned a verdict of “not guilty” which was received with loud acclamations both inside and outside the court, the delighted diggers carrying off the liberated editor on their shoulders to celebrate the victory in the “flowing bowl,” while the major, accompanied by his sympathizers, made a hurried exit from the back of the court and went home a “sadder and a wiser man.” The administrator, however, brought a civil action against the proprietors of the newspaper for libel, laying his damages at £10,000; but after considerable skirmishing an apology was accepted, and so ended a most disagreeable affair to all parties concerned. Many squibs and cartoons were published at the time, the one which drew the greatest attention being the accompanying (page 298), where Mr. Shippard and an editor well known in South Africa, formerly a member of the Cape house of assembly[63], Mr. R. W. Murray, are represented holding a skipping rope over which the major tumbles. NOTE.—Sir Wm. Owen Lanyon, R. C. M. G., who had been suffering for some time from cancer in the throat, died at the Windsor Hotel, New York, on April 6th, 1887. [Illustration]