At dinner I ordered a bottle of wine. The landlord brought it up himself, as an excuse for a gossip. He was a shrivelled-up little man, about sixty, not at all like the typical Boniface. "I thought that I should have been on the jury. But I was on the jury yesterday instead. But there are two cousins of mine who are--got heads screwed on their shoulders both of 'em." "Indeed? Will you have a glass of wine?" "Thank you, ma'am, you're very kind. I don't mind if I do." He did not mind. "I can recommend this port wine. I've had it in my cellars over twenty years. Your very good health, ma'am. Yes." He shook his head. "Neither of them holds with this chap's little games." I had not the faintest notion to what little games he alluded. "I saw you in court, ma'am. Might I ask if you're interested in any of the parties?" "Not at all. I am an American. While I was staying in England I thought that I would not lose an opportunity of seeing one of your great trials." "Ay, this is a very great trial, this is. It won't soon be forgotten. Do you think he's guilty?" "Do you?" "Well, what I say is just this. I wouldn't be locked up alone with a strange woman in a railway carriage all the way from Brighton to London, not for--not for any amount of money." "You are flattering." "I don't mean nothing--not at all. Only, in this case, how are we to say what happened? He seems to be a decent kind of chap. She might have been nasty, there might have been a rumpus, he might have tried to get away from her, she might have fallen out upon the line. How is any one to tell?" My friend, the landlord, in spite of his somewhat unpromising appearance, seemed to be one of the few sensible persons I had recently encountered. I pressed him to take another glass of wine. He yielded to the pressure. "Don't you think they'll find him guilty, then?" "Oh, they'll find him guilty, safe enough, and I daresay they'll hang him, too. That's just the best of it. When a man gets mixed up with a woman in a thing like this they're sure to think the worse of him. But it doesn't follow that he did it, any the more for that. As for that chap Taunton, I'd hang him!" It seemed that my friend the gentleman had good cause to congratulate himself on the possession of such a relative. He seemed to be held in general esteem. When the court reopened the next day I changed my seat. I had taken careful stock of the scene of action the day before. The result had been that I came to one or two conclusions. I perceived, for one thing, that one might very easily sit upon the bench and yet preserve one's anonymity. If I wore a cloak, kept my veil down, sat on the back row, and kept myself in the shade, I need fear no recognition from Tommy. I quite hungered for a sight of the prisoner. I had not dared to turn and look at him from where I sat the day before. The action might not improbably have attracted his attention.