Upon the subject of the defendant's guilt public opinion fluctuated, and was not infrequently influenced by news from the seat of war: when it looked as if the Germans were primed for a smashing victory, the doubting centred firmly upon the family of Kraus and Miss Frieda Appel; but when once more convinced that the Germans were fighting the long and losing game, the hyphenated were banished in favour of that far more interesting suspect, Mrs. Balfame. Certainly there was nothing more amusing than trying and condemning a prisoner long before she had time to reach judge and jury, and tearing her to shreds psychologically. In Spain the people high and low still have the bull-fight; other countries have the prize-ring, these being the sole objective outlets in times of peace for that lust of blood and prey which held the spectators in a Roman arena spellbound when youths and maidens were flung to the lions. But in the vast majority of Earth's peoples this ancestral craving is forced by Civilisation to gratify itself imaginatively, and it is this cormorant in the human mind that the press feeds conscientiously and often. In Elsinore the subject raged day and night, and the opinion of the man in the street may be summed up in the words of one of them to Mr. James Broderick of the _New York News_: "Brain storm, nothin'. She ain't that sort. She done it and done it as deliberately as hell. I ain't sayin' that she didn't have some excuse, for I despised Dave Balfame, and I guess most of us would let her off if we served on the jury, if only because we don't want this county disgraced, especially Elsinore. But that ain't got nothin' to do with it. And there's an awful lot of men who think more of their consciences than they do even of Brabant, let alone of Elsinore, where like as not all of 'em won't have been born--the jurors, I mean. I'm just wonderin'!" Mr. Broderick met Mrs. Phipps one afternoon at Alys Crumley's. She was not a member of the inner twelve, but a staunch admirer of Mrs. Balfame, although by no means sure of her innocence. "Maybe she did," she admitted, "since you are not interviewing me for print. But it's yet to be proved, and if she does get off, I don't fancy she'll lose many of her friends--she wouldn't anyhow, but then if she went up, they'd have so much further to call! As for wars," she continued with apparent irrelevance, "there's this much to be said: a lot of good men may get killed, but when you think of the thousands of detestable, tyrannical, stingy, boresome husbands--well, it is to be imagined that a few widows will manage to bear up. If women all over the world refuse to come forward in one grand concerted peace movement, perhaps we can guess the reason why."