gentlemen, if criminals never made mistakes, inconceivable or not as we
may choose to consider them--if they never made those mistakes, they
would never stand in that dock."

It was late on the Saturday afternoon when the judge summed up; but a
pleasant surprise was in store for those who felt that his lordship must
speak at greater length than either of the counsel between whom he was
to hold the scales. The address from the bench was much the shortest of
the three. Less exhaustive than the conventional review of a
complicated case, it was a disquisition of conspicuous clearness and
impartiality. Only the salient points were laid before the jury, for the
last time, and in a nutshell, but with hardly a hint of the judge's own
opinion upon any one of them. The expression of that opinion was
reserved for a point of even greater import than the value of any
separate piece of evidence. If, said the judge, the inferences and
theory of the prosecution were correct; if this unhappy woman, driven to
desperation by her husband, and knowing where he kept his pistols, had
taken his life with one of them, and afterwards manufactured the traces
of a supposititious burglary; then there was no circumstance connected
with the crime which could by any possibility reduce it from murder to
manslaughter. The solemnity of this pronouncement was felt in the
farthest corner of the crowded court. So they were to find her guilty of
wilful murder, or not guilty at all! Every eye sped involuntarily to the
slim black figure in the dock; and, under the gaze of all, the figure
made the least little bow--a movement so slight and so spontaneous as to
suggest unconsciousness, but all the more eloquent on that account.

Yet to many in court, more especially to the theatrical folk behind the
man with the white hair, the gesture was but one more subtle touch in
an exhibition of consummate art and nerve.