“Certainly, my lord. I have here an attested copy of the letter containing the dream; and that your lordship may not suppose that the gentleman dreamed the dream after the event, you will note that the letter was written in India on the night following the very evening on which the murder was perpetrated here, so that the gentleman to whom the vision of the night came upon his bed, could not possibly have heard anything of it. And another thing I may note, that the murder was so wholly improbable, that the real perpetrators escaped all suspicion till this dream, and, as it proved, rightly, threw it upon them, having previously caused the most unfortunate arrest and trial of a most unlikely man for a murderer, merely from his having been last seen on the spot.” “Most extraordinary!” said the judge. “Perhaps, Mr. Whiteman, we don’t understand everything yet, even in this enlightened nineteenth century.” “No, my lord,” said the barrister, “I certainly do not pretend to understand anything of this sort. I am bound to receive it, as a thoroughly attested fact, and I have much pleasure in handing up to your lordship this singular document.” The letter was handed across the table by some of the counsel to the judge, and the barrister proceeded:— “The prisoner at the bar, it is admitted by himself in the depositions taken by the magistrates, and as was and will be also proved by two eye-witnesses, was in company with the chief criminal, Scammel. It cannot be proved that he assisted in the murder itself, but it can that he helped to throw the murdered man into the river, and shared the money of which the deceased gentleman was plundered; and that the prisoner never, till arrested for the crime, took any pains to make the fact known to any one. “I don’t see,” said the judge, “how there could be two eye-witnesses, unless they are partners in the crime who have turned king’s evidence, and yet the complete concealment of the true perpetrators of the crime have brought an innocent person into question for it.” “Your lordship will soon see the reason when the witnesses are called.” “Very well; go on,” said the judge. The depositions were read, and the evidence was then gone through; and as the counsel called in the two Shalcrosses, he said, “Now, my lord, you will see the two eye-witnesses.” The evidence was that with which our readers are already acquainted. The jury found Hopcraft guilty on the second count—that of being accessory to the fact; and on the third—that of concealment; and Hopcraft was very agreeably surprised to find himself not condemned to be hanged, but only transported to Botany Bay for the term of fourteen years.