"Gentlemen, you will first apply your minds to considering all the evidence, and you will next consider whether you are satisfied that the prisoner knew the difference between right and wrong so far as the act with which he is charged is concerned. You must decide whether he knew the nature and quality of the act, and whether he knew the difference between that act being right, and that act being wrong. I have already pointed out to you that the law presumes him to be of sane mind, and able to distinguish between right and wrong, and it is for him to satisfy you, if he is to escape responsibility for this act, that he could not tell whether it was right or wrong. If you are satisfied of that, you ought to say that he is guilty of the act alleged, but insane at the time it was committed. If you are not satisfied on that point, then it is your duty to find him guilty of murder. Gentlemen, you will kindly retire and consider your verdict." The jury retired, and there ensued a period of tension, which the lawyers employed in discussing the technicalities of the case and the probabilities of an acquittal. Mr. Oakham thought an acquittal was a certainty, but Mr. Middleheath, with a deeper knowledge of the ways of provincial juries, declared that the defence would have stood a better chance of success before a London jury, because Londoners had more imagination than other Englishmen. "You never can tell how a d----d muddle-headed country jury will decide a highly technical case like this," said the K.C. peevishly. "I've lost stronger cases than this before a Norfolk jury. Norfolk men are clannish, and Horbury's evidence carried weight. He is a Norfolk man, though he has been in London. One never knows, of course. If the jury remain out over an hour I think we will pull it off." But the jury returned into court after an absence of forty minutes. The judge, who was waiting in his private room, was informed, and he entered the court and resumed his seat. The jury answered to their names, and then the Clerk of Arraigns, in a sing-song voice, said: "Gentlemen, have you agreed upon your verdict? Do you find the prisoner guilty or not guilty of wilful murder?" "Guilty!" answered the foreman, in a loud, clear voice. "You say that he is guilty of murder, and that is the verdict of you all?" "That is the verdict of us all," was the response. "James Ronald Penreath," continued the clerk, turning to the accused man, and speaking in the same sing-song tones of one who repeated a formula by rote, "you stand convicted of the crime of wilful murder. Have you anything to say for yourself why the Court should not give you judgment of death according to law?" The man in the dock, who had turned very pale, merely shook his head. The judge, with expressionless face and in an expressionless voice, pronounced sentence of death. CHAPTER XVII