u to discount her evidence
by the evident ill-feeling she manifested. I ask you to believe that
the last footsteps were those of the murderer, and that they were
heavier because they were a man's.

'What else is there against the prisoner? I ask, what else? She came
down late the next morning, forsooth! That is the reason why you
are asked to send her in her youth and beauty to a felon's doom.
Incredible! Monstrous! As if we all did not constantly get up late,
for some reason or another. As if a person who had been out late the
night before would not naturally oversleep herself. Why, if she had
committed a crime she would have taken particular care to be down
early. She would have tried to throw off suspicion by acting in her
ordinary way. I am ashamed of answering such arguments.

'The latchkey incident is dead in her favour.'

Here the jury, who had shown signs of weariness after their long
sitting, brightened up again. They had made up their minds that this
was the real point in the case, and were honestly anxious for light
upon it.

'Two things are clear--first, that the person who last came into the
house, and did up the fastenings, was the prisoner; second, that the
prisoner had a latchkey, whether her own one found again or one which
she borrowed from Miss Lewis. Now, if the prisoner had committed this
murder, let us see what she would naturally have done in trying to
throw suspicion off herself.

'In the first place, I say she would not have fastened up the
front-door. To do so was practically saying that the crime was not
the work of an outsider. No, she would have left the door wide open,
as if the criminal were some common robber who had carried off his
booty and run away. In the second place, she would have thrown away
her latchkey, so as to make it appear that she had not been outside.
These points are so important that, with your permission, I will
repeat them again.'

Anyone who has had experience of juries knows how difficult it is to
get into their minds a process of logical reasoning. To the trained
lawyer such a thing is not so hard, but even to him it is far easier
to master reasoning from a book than by word of mouth. Oral teaching
has its advantages, doubtless, but few things are harder than to
convey ideas of any subtlety by means of speech to an audience.

Tressamer patiently set to work, and for twenty minutes he repeated
and explained all that he had been saying. When he thought that t