The man was Jared Boyce, who had been making sickly efforts to slink out of sight, while his sister-in-law was giving her evidence. He had crept up to the door through which he was about to make a desperate plunge just as the Judge observed him. Terrified and shaking from head to foot, the poor wretch muttered that he wasn’t meaning to go out, and retreated to the nearest bench, where his limbs shrunk together, and his face grew more and more livid, as the woman rambled on with her evidence. “Your honor,” said she, “I don’t want yez to be hard on my Robert. A week at Blackwell’s Island will be plenty to bring him to his sinses and make an honest man and dutiful husband of him. But as for the woman who was tempting him into unlawful bigermy, as the perliceman calls it; twenty years wouldn’t be too much for her, with plinty of hard work at the wash-tub, and bread and water to live on.” Here Mrs. Boyce was preparing to step down from the witness stand but turned back again, having thought of something else. “It was that female, your honor, that set him on to parsecute this woman, that never says a word or cries a tear more an if she was made of stone, yer honor; and it was her that put him up to marrying her ownself before the priest, so ye cannot give the crather too much punishment, which is all I have to say, that I think of now.” Having thus expressed her wishes, Mrs. Boyce came down from the witness stand with a look of triumph on the face that had been stained with tears when she went up; for she had great faith in her own eloquence, and entertained no doubt that the judge would kindly deal out justice exactly as she had recommended, for he had seemed deeply interested, and smiled more than once while she was giving her evidence. But the woman’s countenance fell when she saw Jared crouching on his bench, pale and shivering with dread of the fate her words had prepared for him. She went up to him, with a little hesitation, and was about to assure him of her protection, but he glared upon her like a wild beast, and turned his face to the wall, muttering hoarsely, “Get out of my sight, you fool! It is in States Prison for years you’ve put me and your own husband this day.” The woman was struck dumb by his words; the color left her face to its natural wan misery. She looked wildly around toward the judge, who was talking with the tall gentleman who had entered the court-room so quietly. She looked again at Boyce, and in a broken, piteous voice besought him to tell her the truth, would the judge be so cruel after all she had said to him. “Cruel, you idiot! he can’t help himself,” answered the clerk, livid with malice and cowardly dread, “you’ve done for me, and you’ve done for your own husband.” “No, no, it’s wanting to break my heart ye are, just out of spite; but I don’t believe ye. It’s the woman he’ll send up yonder.” “The woman, he can’t touch her!” “What! what is it ye say.”