aracters, including the prisoner. But they now threw away the blocks
representing Eleanor, and which had originally done service in
America, where they represented a female temperance lecturer of
moderate attractiveness, and came out with full-page illustrations,
taken in one case from the portrait of the most charming actress on
the Parisian stage, and all calculated to feed the growing flame of
sympathy with the victim of what was now boldly referred to as a
'miscarriage of justice.'

The sporting fraternity, too, rallied round Eleanor almost to a man.
A tremendous number of wagers had been made as to her fate, and
those whose success was involved in her escape neglected no means
of bringing about the desired end. And as public sentiment has not
yet sunk quite so low as to tolerate petitions and meetings against
clemency, the natural effect of all this was to make it appear that
the suffrages of the whole community were on one side.

Even the jurymen began to repent their verdict. Several of them
allowed themselves to be interviewed by pressmen, and went so far as
to state that they had given their verdict with much misgiving, and
hoped that a commutation of sentence would follow.

Petitions flowed in upon the Home Secretary. Meetings were held, not
only in Porthstone and the neighbouring towns, but all over the
country. Finally the excitement culminated in a monster meeting in
London itself, in one of the largest public halls of the Metropolis,
at which the chair was taken by a nobleman, and the speakers included
a canon of the Church of England, a Roman cardinal, a leading light of
the Wesleyan denomination, a major-general (on half-pay), and an
ex-colonial judge.

The office of Home Secretary happened to be held at this time by an
experienced member of the legal profession, and it is well known that
trained lawyers are far more cautious in condemning, and usually
milder in punishing, than laymen. The Home Secretary wavered. He sent
for the judge who had presided at the trial, and Sir Daniel Buller,
who had had time to recover from his little pique against the
prisoner's counsel, infused his own doubt into the Home Secretary's
mind.

At last the Minister issued a decision. It was a thorough specimen of
the not-guilty-but-don't-do-it-again order of judgment. It stated that
the Home Secretary saw no reason to doubt the substantial guilt of
Eleanor Owen, but that as, in his opinion, the evidence was of an
imperf