He then proceeded to review the evidence, pulling it to pieces, and cutting right and left into every deposition, showing up the flaws, attacking _sans ménagement_ the character and veracity of the witnesses, dealing blows with no gentle hand on every side, and evidently lashing "his learned friend the Solicitor-General" into a state of suppressed fury; the whole drift and gist of his argument going to prove that, unless the fact of the prisoner's visit to the chemist's shop in Vero street did, to the minds of the jury, involve as a necessary consequence his purchasing the paper of strychnine, that also being satisfactorily established by conclusive {88} evidence, no verdict against the prisoner could be found. On the other hand, the last witness has positively declared that the strychnine had been purchased under false pretences by a female, and that on the following day hush-money had been sent to and received by James Ball not to identify that woman who bought the poison. Further, he should presently call a witness who would corroborate all that had been disclosed by James Ball--one whom he, Ball, had evidently considered as effectually silenced; one who, though but a boy, had given a very steady, consistent, and lucid account of what had transpired on the evening of the 23d and on the following day. After commenting further upon this, and touching pointedly upon the curious coincidence of my rencontre with the woman in Vere street and the visit of the woman to the chemist's shop, he wound up his address: "There has been question today, gentlemen, of one whose name should never have been dragged before your notice, but who, in her agonized wish of doing her feeble part in clearing _him_, her betrothed husband, from the foul charge laid on him, has besought us, who are engaged in his defence, not to spare her, not to deprive her of taking her share in the testimony we shall bring forward in his favor. Gentlemen, this noble-minded girl. Miss Ada Leslie, will tell you in what terms the prisoner at the bar used to speak of his deceased uncle--the only guardian and father whom he ever remembers--in that intimate communion which exists between a man and the woman whom he is going to make part of himself. I need add no more. Providence has shaken from under your feet the only ground upon which you could condemn Mr. Atherton; Providence has, to my mind, pointed out the road along which further inquiries into this most heinous and wicked murder can be pursued. The same almighty and just God will enlighten your understandings and bring your minds to a righteous conclusion upon the case before you. But, gentlemen, although as I said at first starting, we have better grounds than those of private conviction upon which to urge the prisoner's innocence--viz., those of proof and evidence--still I cannot but think you all feel with me that, as you look at him standing there, as you remember the tones of his voice, so familiar to us in this court,