y as to the postmarks
was dissipated. The envelope was a declared fraud, and the fraud
required no further proof. That morsel of evidence had been fabricated,
and laid, at any rate, one of the witnesses in the last trial open to a
charge of perjury. So resolving, Judge Bramber pushed the papers away
from him, and began to think the case over in his mind.

There was certainly something in the entire case as it now stood to
excuse Sir John. That was the first line which his thoughts took. An
advocate having clearly seen into a morsel of evidence on the side
opposed to him, and having proved to himself beyond all doubt that it
was maliciously false, must be held to be justified in holding more than
a mere advocate's conviction as to the innocence of his client. Sir John
had of course felt that a foul plot had been contrived. A foul plot no
doubt had been contrived. Had the discovery taken place before the case
had been submitted to the jury, the detection of that plot would
doubtless have saved the prisoner, whether guilty or innocent. So much
Judge Bramber admitted.

But should it necessarily serve to save him now? Before a jury it would
have saved him, whether guilty or innocent. But the law had got hold of
him, and had made him guilty, and the law need not now subject itself to
the normal human weakness of a jury. The case was now in his hands,--in
his, and those of the Secretary, and there need be no weakness. If the
man was innocent, in God's name let him go;--though, as the judge
observed to himself, he had deserved all he had got for his folly and
vice. But this discovered plot by no means proved the man's innocence.
It only proved the determination of certain persons to secure his
conviction, whether by foul means or fair. Then he recapitulated to
himself various cases in which he had known false evidence to have been
added to true, with the object of convincing a jury as to a real fact.

It might well be that this gang of ruffians,--for it was manifest that
there had been such a gang,--finding the envelope addressed by the man
to his wife, had fraudulently,--and as foolishly as fraudulently,--
endeavoured to bolster up their case by the postage-stamp and the
postmark. Looking back at all the facts, remembering that fatal
twenty thousand pounds, remembering that though the postmarks were
forged on that envelope the writing was true, remembering the
acknowledged promise and the combined testimony of the four perso