Now, any one of those circumstances in itself would not be such as I could venture to submit to you as conclusive of the prisoner’s guilt, but I ask your attention to a series of things following one upon the other, which, at the same time, are of a most remarkable character, and, taken as a whole, lead but to one conclusion. The death having taken place (I am passing over for a moment other circumstances which have no reference to the immediate cause of death, I shall come back to them in another part of the case), we find the father-in-law comes down to Rugeley upon the Friday. Let us see what the conduct of the prisoner is then. The father-in-law applies to him for information on the subject of his stepson’s affairs. I pass that over, because that, too, will come under a different head; but having done so, and it appearing from the representation which the father-in-law made that the man had died in comparative poverty, something is said about his being buried. “Well,” says Mr. Stevens, “rich or poor, poor fellow, he must be buried.” Mr. Palmer immediately says, “If that is all, I will bury him myself.” “No,” says the stepfather, and the brother interposes. Mr. Stevens says, “No, I am his stepfather and his executor, and it is my place to bury him.” Well, there is nothing in all that. Palmer may have said, with regard to his friend, that he would see the last respect paid to his memory. But there is this remarkable thing, when the stepfather says that nobody shall bury him but himself, and makes the observation that perhaps it will be inconvenient to the people at the inn to have him lying there for two or three days, because he intended to have him buried in town, so that the poor man might lie in the same grave with his mother--immediately after this Palmer says, “There will be no harm in that, he can stay as long as you like; but the body ought to be put in a coffin immediately.” After that Mr. Stevens gets into conversation with Dr. Bamford about his son-in-law, and while they are in conversation Mr. Palmer slips away, goes out into the town, and comes back in about half an hour, when Mr. Stevens asks him for the name of some undertaker in order that he may go and give the undertaker directions about the funeral, and he finds to his surprise that Mr. Palmer has gone out, and has himself, without any authority, ordered a shell and a strong oak coffin in order that the body may be immediately put away. This, again, is a circumstance not unworthy of consideration. Why should he interfere and meddle in a matter which did not concern him, and which it was the business and province of another man to attend to, except this, that he had made up his mind that that body should be consigned to its last resting-place and removed from the sight of man with as much rapidity as circumstances would permit of? You have heard what took place in the course of conversation upon the subject of the betting book. I pass that by for the present.