he asked had either a pregnant aptness, opened up new avenues of
deliberation, or were touched with mystery--seemed to have a longer
reach than the moment or the hour.

Before the end of this second day, however, more attention was upon him
than upon the prisoner, and nine-tenths of the people in the court-room
could have told how many fine linen handkerchiefs he used during the
afternoon, how many times he adjusted his monocle to look at the judge
meditatively. Probably no man, for eight hours a day, ever exasperated
and tried a judge, jury, and public, as did this man of twenty-nine years
of age, who had been known at college as Beauty Steele, and who was still
so spoken of familiarly; or was called as familiarly, Charley Steele, by
people who never had attempted to be familiar with him.

The second day of the trial had ended gloomily for the prisoner. The
coil of evidence had drawn so close that extrication seemed impossible.
That the evidence was circumstantial, that no sign of the crime was upon
the prisoner, that he was found sleeping quietly in his bed when he was
arrested, that he had not been seen to commit the deed, did not weigh in
the minds of the general public. The man's guilt was freely believed;
not even the few who clung to the opinion that Charley Steele would yet
get him off thought that he was innocent. There seemed no flaw in the
evidence, once granted its circumstantiality.

During the last two hours of the sitting the prisoner had looked at his
counsel in despair, for he seemed perfunctorily conducting the case: was
occupied in sketching upon the blotting-pad before him, looking out of
the window, or turning his head occasionally towards a corner where sat a
half-dozen well-dressed ladies, and more particularly towards one lady
who watched him in a puzzled way--more than once with a look of