officer had witnesses in court able to prove, and desirous of proving,
that we had over and over again compromised matters with dissatisfied
tenants, and cancelled agreements, not once or twice, but many, times;
further, on no single occasion had Miss Blake and her niece ever slept a
single night in the uninhabited house from the day when they left it; no
matter how scarce of money they chanced to be, they went into lodgings
rather than reside at River Hall. This was beyond dispute and Miss
Blake's evidence supplied the reason for conduct so extraordinary.

For some reason the house was uninhabitable. The very owners could not
live in it; and yet--so in imagination we heard Serjeant Playfire
declaim--"The lady from whom the TRUTH had that day been reluctantly
wrung had the audacity to insist that delicate women and tender children
should continue to inhabit a dwelling over which a CURSE seemed
brooding--a dwelling where the dead were always striving for mastery
with the living; or else pay Miss Blake a sum of money which should
enable her and the daughter of the suicide to live in ease and luxury on
the profits of DECEPTION."

And looking at the matter candidly, our counsel did not believe the jury
could return a verdict. He felt satisfied, he said, there was not a
landlord in the box, that they were all tenants, who would consider the
three months' rent paid over and above the actual occupation rent,
ample, and more than ample, remuneration.

On the other hand, Serjeant Playfire, whose experience of juries was
large, and calculated to make him feel some contempt for the judgment of
"twelve honest men" in any case from pocket-picking to manslaughter, had
a prevision that, when the judge had explained to Mr. Foreman and
gentlemen of the jury, the nature of a contract, and told them