ly set themselves to hear and note her examination.

"Miss Folliard, you are aware of the charges which have placed the
prisoner at the bar of justice and his country?"

"Not exactly; I have heard little of it beyond the fact of his
incarceration."

"He stands there charged with two very heinous crimes--one of them,
the theft or robbery of a valuable packet of jewels, your father's
property."

"Oh, no," she replied, "they are my own exclusive property--not
my father's. They were the property of my dear mother, who, on her
death-bed, bequeathed them to me, in the presence of my father himself;
and I always considered them as mine."

"But they were found upon the person of the prisoner?"

"Oh, yes; but that is very easily explained. It is no secret now, that,
in order to avoid a marriage which my father was forcing on me with Sir
Robert Whitecraft, I chose the less evil, and committed myself to
the honor of Mr. Reilly. If I had not done so I should have committed
suicide, I think, rather than marry Whitecraft--a man so utterly devoid
of principle and delicacy that he sent an abandoned female into my
father's house in the capacity of my maid and also as a spy upon my
conduct."

This astounding fact created an immense sensation throughout the court,
and the lawyer who was examining her began to feel that her object in
coming there was to give evidence in favor of Reilly, and not against
him. He determined, however, to try her a little farther, and proceeded:

"But, Miss Folliard, how do you account for the fact of the Bingham
jewels being found upon the person of the prisoner?"

"It is the simplest thing in the world," she replied. "I brought my own
jewels with me, and finding", as we proceeded, that I was likely to lose
them, having no pocket sufficiently safe in which to carry them, I asked
Reilly to take charge of them, which he did. Our unexpected capture, and
the consequent agitation, prevented him from returning them to me, and
they were accordingly found upon his person; but, as for stealing them,
he is just as guilty as his lordship on the bench."

"Miss Folliard," proceeded the lawyer, "you have taken us by surprise
to-day. How does it happen that you volunteered your evidence against
the prisoner, and, now that you have come forward, every word you utter
is in his favor? Your mind must have recently changed--a fact which
takes very much away from the force of that evidence."

"I pray you, sir, to unde