The “Resident from Richmond Hill,” having dealt with the meeting of Burr and Wilkinson, could not resist the opportunity of reporting his impressions of Luther Martin, lawyer for the defense. Said he: “As I have mentioned the bar, permit me to introduce a strange lawyer from a neighboring State whose character towers to the highest sphere of jurisprudence. My expectations were at first as extravagant as his character. I marked him in my mind’s eye as a happy standard by which I might form some estimate of the Virginia bar. But pardon me ye critics and eulogists of Mr. M. ... if I cannot join in the forensic paean, if instead of placing him in the zenith I put him in the nadir.” General Wilkinson’s presence in court was brief. The Grand Jury, which had been waiting so long, was impatient to hear him. Grand jury proceedings are customarily regarded as sacred and what goes on behind closed doors is supposedly held in the strictest confidence. But the Grand Jury in the Burr case, like so many other features of that strange performance, refused to conform to the normal pattern. At least one serious leak led to a controversy in the press. In his continued correspondence with Judge Nicholson the jury’s foreman set down some salty observations. Nor was the star witness silent. His experience gave him another chance to unburden himself to his patron in Washington. Wilkinson brought with him into the jury room the original of the famous letter in cipher which he had received from Burr by the hand of Samuel Swartwout. It was a complicated cipher which baffled the jury, with one exception. That exception was John Randolph of Roanoke who gave a demonstration of his remarkable intellect by mastering the key at once and explaining the solution to his less astute fellow jurymen. The General’s reception was less than cordial. To a man who claimed to have saved his country through his bold and patriotic actions the militant attitude of the Grand Jury was painful indeed. The General made his lament to Jefferson: “I dreamt not of the importance attached to my presence before I reached Hampton ... for I had anticipated that a deluge of testimony would have been poured forth from all quarters to overwhelm him [Burr] with guilt and dishonor.” That, perhaps, to excuse his having kept the Grand Jury waiting. “Sadly, indeed, was I mistaken, and to my astonishment I found the traitor vindicated and myself condemned by a mass of wealth, character, influence and talents. Merciful God, what a spectacle did I behold--integrity and truth perverted and trampled under foot by turpitude and guilt, patriotism appalled and usurpation triumphant. Did I ever expect it would depend on my humble self to stop the current of such a polluted stream? Never, never.”