"I harp upon that date," said Carlton, "because, as I have already remarked, it seems to have been a fatal date for me. It has arisen so many times in the course of this case! This, however, is not the precise moment for enumerating those occasions; let us first finish with each other. Did you, Sir Wilton Gleed, on the eighteenth day of this present month, have separate or collective conversation with the witnesses Busby, Fuller, and Ivey?" "Yes, I did," said Gleed, hot, white, and glaring. "Separate or collective? Did you speak to them one at a time or all together?" "Both, if you like!" cried the witness, wildly. "I can't remember. Better say both!" "You interviewed these witnesses, separately and collectively, on the very day that the other witness, Frost, laid an information against me before yourself as Justice of the Peace?" "I said it was that day. You ask the same question again and again!" The man was fuming, trembling, near to tears or curses of mortification and blind rage. "I have but two more questions to ask you, and I am done," rejoined Carlton. "Did the witness Fuller tell you of the light in the church, and the witness Ivey of what _he_ saw later on, during these conversations of the fatal eighteenth?" "They did." "And was this the first you had heard of those experiences?" "It was." "That is my last question, Sir Wilton Gleed." The justices put none. Gleed glared at them as he left the box. "I think," said he, "that this is the most scandalous incident--most disgraceful thing I ever heard of in my life!" "I quite agree with you," whispered Wilders. "And I also," said Mr. Preston, in a different tone. But no word fell from Rhadamanthus. His small eyes did not leave Carlton's face for above one second in the sixty. But their expression was inscrutable. "May I now claim the indulgence of the court for a very few minutes?" asked the clergyman in the dock. The clergymen on the bench looked at the clock and at each other. It was already past the hour for luncheon. "Better go on," urged Preston, "and get it over." "If you mean what you say," said Wilders to the accused, "we will hear you now; if you proceed to treat us to a mere display of words, I shall adjourn the court. Meanwhile it is my duty to remind you that whatever you say will be taken down in writing, and may be given in evidence against you upon your trial." "In the event of my committal," returned Robert Carlton, "I am prepared to stand or fall by every word that I have uttered or may utter now; and I shall not detain you long. I am well aware how I have trespassed already upon the time of this court, but I will waste none upon vain or insincere apology. I came here to answer to a very terrible charge; it was and it is my duty to do so as fully and as emphatically as I possibly can. Yet I have little to add to the evidence before you; a comment or two, and I am done.