I was dimly conscious of the uproar which arose in the court-room, for I was away in a by-gone time, a vision before me, clear as a picture, of a sunny room, myself at a writing-desk overlooking accounts, and a small curly haired child poring over a book on the rug at my feet "_Nancy made it just like Jock's!_" "_Nancy made it just like Jock's!_" I can recall the fear that seized me as the duke's letter was being examined by those familiar with his writings; the chill I felt as Blake, who knew his hand the best, was summoned to inspect it; my terror as he hesitated, with all the time that sing-song refrain going over and over in my head, so loud that I was afraid that everyone in the court would hear it; and then, far away and little, like a wood-call, "Nancy made it----" And when Blake and Dundas identified the writing, and O'Sullivan, the duke's own secretary, declared that not only would he be willing to swear to his belief of the duke's hand, but to the spirit of the document as well, I put my head on the back of Danvers's chair to hide the tears which rolled down my cheeks, tears of relief, but springing from a very different cause than the one attributed for them. There was more summing up and going back and forth, but the tension of the trial was over for all except me and one other--one wide-eyed little creature, sitting in her black gown, with Dickenson beside her, on the other side of the court-room; a slender girlish figure before whom my soul was on its knees. I imagined her work, after she asked me to pray for her, upon that awful night. I thought of fifty things on the second, as it seemed. Visions came to me of Nancy dipping her head in the basin of water, Nancy by the mail-bag in the early dawning before the officers had come, and to that "Nancy made it just like Jock's," there came, with terror to my soul, another jumble of words--"Accessory after the fact." I knew that the jury consulted but a few minutes before the whole of Edinburgh was shaking hands with Danvers, assuring him of their never-shaken trust in his innocence, saw Pitcairn putting his papers into the black-leather case, was conscious that Billy Deuceace was laughing as he talked to some women, with his hand on Danvers's shoulder. I say that I was aware of these things, but so remotely that they seemed part of a dream, for my real thought was to get to Nancy, to take her away, to shield her from I know not what; and leaving the Carmichael party, I made my way to the place where she was awaiting the carriage.