In a few moments he was pushing his way through the crowd in the entrance, and the next instant he caught sight of Dudley, standing with his arms crossed upon his chest, and his eyes fixed upon the jury-box. His brow was calm, but very stern; there was no fear in his fine eyes, but they were grave, even to sadness. On the opposite side were the jury, with their foreman leaning a little forward; and at the same instant a voice, coming from just below the bench, demanded, in a loud tone, "How say you, gentlemen of the jury; Guilty, or not guilty?" "Guilty of manslaughter, my lord," replied the foreman. The eyes of Edgar Adelon turned dim, his brain reeled, and he fell back amongst the crowd without uttering a word. CHAPTER XXVI. Two years had passed. Two years! What is it? who can say? Different to every being in the whole wide range of universal existence, Time is the true chameleon, and takes its colour entirely from the things through which it glides. Now gray and dull, now bright and shining, now purple with the mingled hues of exertion and success, rosy with love and hope, or azure with faith and confidence! Years, what are they? Nothing: for to many they have no existence; mere spots in the wide ocean of eternity, which realize the mathematician's utmost abstraction when he defines a point as that which hath no parts, or which hath no magnitude--neither length, breadth, nor thickness. Yet to others how important are years, how full of events, and feelings, and actions! How often is it that, in that short space of two years a life is crowded; so that when we look back at the end of mortal existence, there, gathered into those four and twenty months, stands out the whole of active being, and all the rest is idleness and emptiness, the broad selvages of the narrow strip of cloth.