perhaps, no less reasonably than impatiently wished for. I, at last,
after nearly a year's confinement, equal to either fortune, entrust
myself to the candour, the justice, the humanity of your Lordship, and to
yours, my countrymen, gentlemen of the jury."

The prisoner ceased: and the painful and choking sensations of sympathy,
compassion, regret, admiration, all uniting, all mellowing into one
fearful hope for his acquittal, made themselves felt through the crowded
court.

In two persons only, an uneasy sentiment remained--a sentiment that the
prisoner had not completed that which they would have asked from him. The
one was Lester;--he had expected a more warm, a more earnest, though,
perhaps, a less ingenious and artful defence. He had expected Aram to
dwell far more on the improbable and contradictory evidence of Houseman,
and above all, to have explained away, all that was still left
unaccounted for in his acquaintance with Clarke (as we will still call
the deceased), and the allegation that he had gone out with him on the
fatal night of the disappearance of the latter. At every word of the
prisoner's defence, he had waited almost breathlessly, in the hope that
the next sentence would begin an explanation or a denial on this point:
and when Aram ceased, a chill, a depression, a disappointment, remained
vaguely on his mind. Yet so lightly and so haughtily had Aram approached
and glanced over the immediate evidence of the witnesses against him,
that his silence her might have been but the natural result of a disdain,
that belonged essentially to his calm and proud character. The other
person we referred to, and whom his defence had not impressed with a
belief in its truth, equal to an admiration for its skill, was one far
more important in deciding the prisoner's fate--it was the Judge!