The presiding judge of the Court at that time was the Lord Justice-Clerk Boyle; the other judges, Lords Pitmilly, Meadowbank, and M'Kenzie; and the prosecutor, Sir William Rae, Lord Advocate. The leading counsel for Burke was the Dean of Faculty, that for M'Dougal, Henry Cockburn, James Tytler being the Crown agent. The witnesses were fifty-five in number--the two principal, Hare and his wife, received as king's evidence in the characters of _socii criminis_. The panels having taken their places at the bar in the midst of a crowded court, filled long before the opening of the doors by people who had the privilege of influence, and whose numbers were only as a trifle in comparison of the mass outside, Mr Patrick Robertson, one of Burke's junior counsel, made a technical objection to the reading of the indictment, which was overruled. A defence was then lodged for Burke, and supported by the same counsel, on the ground that it was contrary to the law of Scotland to combine in one libel so many charges and two separate panels. The argument, which was a long one, involving points of law and practice, was followed up by the Dean of Faculty, and answered by the Lord Advocate, with this result, that the judges, with the consent of the public prosecutor, agreed to limit the charge to the case of Docherty, and thus limited, the proceedings went on. The various witnesses, forming, however, a very small portion of the whole fifty-five cited, appeared in succession to give their evidence. Every word uttered by every one was caught by ears strung to the highest pitch of sensibility; and throughout the entire day, the deep silence, more like that of a death-chamber than a court, was as much the expression of curiosity as of awe--reminding one, too, of the stillness of an audience where the feelings are claimed by oppressed virtue with the encircling meshes in which innocence is to be involved by death getting closer and closer as the scenes succeed. The interest lay in the gradual development, while the heart was affected by all the different passions which, changing from pity for the victims to hatred of the murderers, were kept in continual agitation. Over all, there was the oppressive awe inspired by the presence of the fearful men and women, as if they had been demons of monstrous forms and powers placed there under restraining bonds. At several times,--and especially when Hare described the screigh of the little old woman which preceded that ten minutes' agony in which she lay under the pressure of Burke--Hare being all the while, according to his lie, sitting coolly looking on,--you might have heard deep sighs escaping from strong hearts, in spite of resolutions to restrain them. Even then the grateful creature, who seemed to have trusted Burke alone, and defended him in the preceding sham fight, was only "dead a wee," and the process was to be resumed. But even this effect was transcended, if