"If it fail to satisfy you of the guilt of the prisoner, if your
minds are not convinced, if you remain in doubt, you must acquit
him, be the evidence positive or presumptive, because the law
regards a man as innocent so long as any reasonable doubt of his
guilt exists. But if, on the contrary, you are convinced of the
fact, if there is no chance for a reasonable doubt to exist, it is
imperatively your duty to yourselves, to your country, and to your
God to convict, even if the evidence be wholly presumptive."
I set this extremely dry document down exactly as it is recorded in the
files for two reasons: first, that it contains all of the charges
against Danvers, and to show how black the case stood against him when
I say that all Pitcairn said he would prove he proved to the last
letter.
After my own testimony was taken, the nature of which is already known,
I was granted the privilege of sitting beside Sandy and his boy, the
three of us being joined daily by Billy Deuceace, whom I love to the
minute of this writing for his devotion to my lad.
Nancy's appearance in court was naturally looked upon as the most
exciting point of the trial, and the morning she was to be called the
crowd was dense to suffocation, the court-officers busy, dashing to and
fro, trying to keep some orderliness among the women, who jostled each
other and gave vent to loud exclamations of annoyance in their efforts
to get places from which the best view might be obtained. It is curious
to note the way some trivial vexation will linger in the mind, for in
recalling this scene it is the annoyance I had from Mrs. MacLeod, mine
landlady of the Star and Garter, that stands out clearest in my memory
of that dreadful waiting time.
She sat well to the front, giving herself important airs, and I could
hear her going back and forth in whispers over the story of Nancy's
visiting the duke at her house to obtain the pardon of Timothy Lapraik.
Wagging her head to and fro, applying her smelling-salts vigorously,
and assuming the manner of an intimate sufferer in the cause, she
exasperated us to such an extent that Billy Deuceace was for throwing
her out of a window.
When Nancy entered every eye in that immense throng was fixed upon her,
and as she stood, so fair to see, in her black hat and gown, waiting to
take the oath, Mrs. MacLeod's feelings overcame her entirely, and she
cried out, in a loud voice: "Ah, the beauty! 'Tis her that should hae
been a duchess!" immediately falling into strong hysterics, upon which
the macers summarily ejected her, to our great satisfaction, and Billy
Deuceace all but cheered.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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