singly to eat more than half a dinner. All this happy and guileless fooling enacted itself again in Everard's memory while his fate was being decided in the serious strife of the barristers, who pleaded for and against his innocence, and made him feel, like Francesca da Rimini in hell, that "there is no greater pain than remembering happy times in misery."

CHAPTER XVIII.

EVERY one felt the defense to be a mere farce, insufficient to kindle interest, much less hope, even in the prisoner. Little Rosalia Grove, the child who saw and spoke with Everard at Long's farm between five and six on the evening of the 31st, was but five years old, and, on being produced in the town hall at Oldport, did nothing but weep bitterly and cling to her father for comfort. His caresses and remonstrances failed to extract anything from her. He could only depose that she had shown him a penny just given her by "a man," when he came in to tea at six; that she said that the man wanted Dr. Everard's parcel, which she had seen her mother take to the Rectory.

The appearance of Winnie Maitland's golden curls in the witness-box touched people and kindled deep indignation in the breasts of both judge and jury, who thought the child had been practiced upon. Her first performance was to cry with fright, though she stated her name and age distinctly, and took her oath properly. She understood the nature of an oath, she said; her sister Lilian had explained it to her, and enjoined her to be very careful in what she said. On being asked what she supposed would be the consequence of her swearing carelessly, she replied that "Henry would be hanged," an idea she had imbibed from Lennie, during many anxious consultations with him.

She did not know exactly at what time Everard returned to the Rectory; it was about tea-time." She did not know what clothes he wore; he was in a great hurry to go up-stairs, to get ready for dinner. She told him there was no hurry, as it was long before dinner-time; but he replied that he was not fit to go into the drawing-room. Cross-examined, she said he was "in a dreadful mess," words used by Everard. She pleaded for "just one toss," and he

threw her up in the air and caught her several times. She did not remember striking him, or coming in contact with him. The hall in which the playing took place was not well lighted.

All of a sudden he set her down, and said, "You have done it now; blinded me." She cried, and made him promise not to tell; she was always getting into trouble for rough play. He went into the kitchen, and came out again with raw beef. She followed him to his room, and he showed her some flowers, and told her to take them to her sister, and "not to come bothering him any more.' She was trying so hard to play gently, and she did not know she touched him. His eye was very bad, but he did all he could to hide it, and said at dinner that he had knocked it against something.

Granfer, who entered the witness-box with a vague notion that his conversational powers had at last a worthy sphere, repeated what he said at Oldport with the same circumlocution and affectation of stupidity, and parried Mr. Braxton's questions, and dealt him cutting rejoinders, with an apparent absence of malice that drove the Court into ecstasies of mirth.

Mr. Maitland and others bore witness to Everard's good reputation, and also to the frankness with which he spoke of his visits to Mrs. Lee in the spring-a circumstance which the counsel for the defense maintained to be incompatible with Judkins's suspicions as to the purpose of those visits.

After listening to Mr. Hawkshaw's labored, impassioned, but totally illogical speech for the defense, no creature in the court had the faintest hope for the prisoner; the only question now was the sentence. Yet there was one who dared to rely upon the summingup, and hope that Mr. Justice Manby would discover some technical flaw, which might afford a loophole for escape. This person was Cyril Maitland, who had set out from the cathedral with such intense determination, but whose courage had failed him at first sight of the judge and that terrible array of human faces, which, to his excited imagination, seemed eager, with a wolfish hunger, for the shame and misery of a fellow-creature. There stood his friend, pilloried before him, the prey of those hungry glances. Cyril's heart bled for him, but he felt that he could never stand there in his place. That Everard's head was bowed, and his eyes cast down beneath that tempest of shame, was only natural; who could stand before it?

The judge's summing-up was brief, terse, and convincing. He

had merely to recapitulate the clear and undisputed evidence-the plea of alibi was contradicted by Widow Dove's evidence; the argument that the prisoner was not the man whom so many witnesses had seen returning to the Rectory at five, but that he was at that moment speaking to Granfer at the wheelwright's corner, was quickly set aside; the evidence of the aged, semi-imbecile creature was scarcely to be relied on against that of so many competent witnesses, including the one who had given evidence with such reluctance; the attempt to turn the innocence of two young children to his own purposes was spoken of in scathing terms; the prisoner's nervous and excited behavior on the evening of the occurrence, and his garbled account of his injury and strenuous attempts to conceal it, were pointed out; the jury were finally exhorted to concentrate their minds upon the question whether the prisoner did or did not kill Benjamin Lee, regardless of all other considerations, and to allow no thoughts of his previous unblemished reputation or tenderness for his rank and prospects to interfere with their judgment. They were to consider, the judge said, that although the consequences of such a crime were undoubtedly tenfold more terrible to one in the prisoner's station than to an uneducated man, yet the guilt of one with such advantages was tenfold greater.

When Mr. Hawkshaw heard this, he knew that not only would the jury return a verdict against his client, but that the judge would give him a severe sentence. Yet Cyril hoped; he remembered that there were twelve men in the jury.

But he did not wait long; a few seconds brought the unanimous verdict. Guilty of manslaughter-a verdict hailed by a quickly stifled murmur of approval from the crowded court.

Like a man suddenly stabbed, Cyril sprang to his feet, throwing up his arms as men only do in uncontrollable agony, and addressed some wild words to the judge. "Stop!" he cried; "I have evidence-important evidence. The prisoner is innocent!"

Mr. Justice Manby, who heard merely a confused outcry, ordered Cyril's removal; Mr. Maitland, thinking his son distracted, pulled him down, and strove to quiet him; there was an attempt to remove him, which was met by promises of good behavior on the part of those around him; and, quiet having been procured, the judge proceeded to give sentence in the usual form, but with some amplification.

Henry Oswald Everard, you have been found guilty," he said.

"of a very cruel and pitiless crime; whether it was a murder committed by deliberate and malicious intention, or merely a homicide done in the heat of anger after considerable provocation, is known only to yourself and your Maker. By the laws of your country you have been convicted of the lesser crime, and it is my painful duty to sentence you for that crime." He went on to say how very painful he found that duty, and to expatiate upon the prisoner's advantages, the pious and refined home in which he was brought up, his liberal education, the power which his scientific knowledge gave him, the advantages derived from his father's honorable name and social standing, the manner in which he was trusted and admitted, a wolf in sheep's clothing, to the poor man's home. He spoke of the dead man's integrity, the respect in which he was held by all who knew him; of his only child's fair fame and defenseless condition, and pointed out the great wickedness and cruel meanness of the prisoner's conduct with regard to her, and dwelt much upon the father's grief and just anger. He spoke also of the prisoner's physical advantages, his young manhood and muscular strength, and contrasted these with Lee's comparative age and stiffness; he alluded to the murderous character of the stick which dealt the fatal blow, and to the prisoner's anatomical knowledge which taught him how to deal it. Those who knew Mr. Justice Manby had seen him come down hard upon prisoners before, but they had never known him so hard. He had once given a wife-killer, a man who had put the climax to years of cruel torture by stamping a little too hard on his slave and killing her, five years, and people had been aghast; precisely similar cases in other parts of the country had got six weeks or a twelvemonth, or even two years. But recently the papers had been sarcastic upon the wife-beaters' short sentences, and upon a prevailing tone of Victor-Hugo sentimentality toward criminals, and Mr. Justice Manby had felt the righteousness of their strictures, and remembered them in dealing with Everard. "I shall therefore give you," he concluded, "the severest sentence which the law allows-twenty years penal servitude."

The sentence fell upon Everard like a blow; he staggered under it, swerved aside, and clutched at the woodwork of the dock to steady himself, while hot drops sprang upon his brow. At the same instant, as if under the same blow, a cry rang through the court, and a man fell down senseless. It was Cyril Maitland.

Everard lifted his head at the cry, and saw what happened,

scarcely heeding it in his agony; he saw Lilian, marble pale but quiet, catch her brother in her arms, and that touched him with an ineffable pity for her through his desperate anguish. He scarcely heard the question if he had anything to say against his sentence, but, on being roused, replied in a dazed way, "I am not guilty, my lord."

Then he was taken from his pedestal of shame, and led away into the terrible darkness of twenty years' ignominy and hopeless suffering, bereft at one stroke of everything-name, fame, fortune (for in those days a felon's property was forfeited), love, liberty, and hope.

In a moment he saw his life as it was but yesterday, before Fate wove its dreadful mesh round him, a life of honorable and useful toil, full of noble ambition, beautiful enthusiasm, and honest striving; rich with the promise of love and domestic peace; happy with friendship and family affection; adorned with culture and scientific research; and rich, above all, with trust in human goodness and divine mercy. He was now bereft of all, even of his faith. God, if there were a God, had forsaken him; man had betrayed and deserted him. The remembrance of Cyril's almost feminine piety sickened his soul. He saw him kneeling before the picture of the Crucifixion with deadly guilt upon him; heard him leading the simple family worship on the day when he went forth in treachery to take the life of a man he had wronged; heard his impassioned, half-hysterical sermon on Innocents' Day; saw him dealing the very Bread of Life to himself and Lilian; remembered the message he had sent him during his detention, "He shall make thy righteousness clear as the light, and thine innocence as the noonday", and broke forth in curses on all canting hypocrites who make religion a cloak for evil deeds.

And he had loved this man so well, trusted and revered him, fed his soul on his moral beauty. That was the sharpest stab in the confusion of pain that poured upon him. And Marion loved him, and Lilian, and the guileless family at Malbourne; and if Cyril should turn and repent even now at the eleventh hour, what would come of it but shame and misery to those he loved so tenderly? Should be denounce him himself-he, the convict? No; that would only double the anguish of all those innocent hearts, and perhaps avail nothing. If he had but suspected before! but now it was too late.