The year of waiting agreed upon between the two young people came to an end while John Brancker was awaiting his trial. Of course, at such a time any talk about love affairs was out of the question. By Frank the delay was hailed gladly, since it put off till a future time the necessity of arriving at a decision as to which he was still as far as ever from having made up his mind one way or the other. Far was he from suspecting that to Hermia the delay was a relief at least equal to that felt by himself. It was a dark and anxious time for Edward Hazeldine. Knowing what he did, he felt bound to proclaim aloud his belief in John Brancker's innocence. There was no other course open to him, and for this reason it was that, without consulting anyone, he secured the services of Mr. Burgees, the eminent criminal advocate, for the defence. It was indeed very bitter to him to think that he, who had always prided himself on his rigid sense of justice--one of the chief maxims of whose life had been to do unto others as he would have them do unto him--should allow an innocent man to be cast into prison and be too timid of soul to speak the word that would have set him free. But the day had now gone by for revealing to the world, except at the last extremity, that which his father's letter had told him. He had allowed the man to be brought in guilty by a coroner's jury, he had allowed him to be committed by the magistrates, he had, allowed him to linger through long, weary weeks in prison with an accusation the most terrible of all accusations hanging over his head, and yet he had not opened his lips. To do so now would be moral and social suicide. He had gone so far that to turn back would be worse than to go forward. He must take the risk, happen what might. If John Brancker were acquitted then might all yet be well, but should the verdict go against him, then--and only then--the dread secret must be told. Not for a thousand such secrets should an innocent man go to the gallows. After that, let ruin, hopeless and irremediable, be his portion. CHAPTER XIII. THE TRIAL. The winter assizes at Dulminster were held early in December, so that John Brancker had not many weeks to lie in prison before being called upon to stand his trial for the murder of James Hazeldine. The grand jury found a true bill against the prisoner, and one crisp, sunny morning, John found himself in a sort of a pen in the centre of a densely crowded court, the one object on which several hundred pairs of curious eyes, some of them helped by opera-glasses, were focused. He was pale, but quite composed, and when called upon in the usual form to plead to the indictment, his low but emphatic "Not guilty" was clearly audible to everyone there.