There is, perhaps, more truth than poetry in the lines that, “of all the sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are those, ‘it might have been.’” If everything which is known now had been known on the trial the result might have been different. And, as we can all be wiser after the event, it may even be conceded that, if different use had been made of things that were known, or were at least within the grasp of knowledge, another conclusion might have been arrived at by the jury. Facts not brought out on the trial were placed before the Court of Criminal Appeal, and when all legal remedies had been exhausted were put before the Cabinet. The one tribunal declined, on legal principles (which are not here criticised), to act upon them; the other, in the exercise of its discretion, declined to give weight to them. None the less, they may be of interest to the public, and they may be here appropriately recalled to the public mind with some observations which were not before either court or Cabinet. HALLIWELL’S STRANGE STORY. Reference has been made more than once to an extraordinary story told by a young man named Percy Halliwell, and as it has gone unchallenged, in circumstances which seemed to call for challenge if it were untrue, it may be given first place in the recital of the fresh facts. Detective Piggott was strong throughout the case in his assertion that Ivy Matthews had never made any statement to the police as to what she could or would say. Literally that was, no doubt, true, but it remains to be seen whether, in view of what follows, it was not an assertion which, while literally true, was well calculated to create a totally false impression. When representations were being made to the Government with a view of securing a reprieve of Ross, pending an appeal to the Privy Council, a statutory declaration by Halliwell was (inter alia) laid before the Attorney-General. This declaration, in addition to being laid before the Government, has been published in the press, and it has never been contradicted. In it Halliwell said that he was in the saloon during the Friday afternoon; that at 6 o’clock he was in the cubicle with the two Rosses and another man named Evans (who, in the meantime, had left the country), and that they drank a bottle of beer in it; that they all left together, and that it would have been impossible for the little girl to have been in the saloon without him seeing her. His evidence about the bottle of beer is all the more valuable because neither Stanley nor Colin Ross were asked anything about it on the trial, and, consequently, said nothing of it.