"

Charles's first witness was Mrs. Lang, his late wife's 'own woman,'
who spared him many questions by garrulously declaring 'what a work'
poor little Madam had made about the rose-coloured sarcenet, causing
the pattern to be searched out as soon as she came home from the
bonfire, and how she had 'gone on at' her husband till he promised
to give it to Mistress Anne, and how he had been astir at four
o'clock in the morning, and had called to her (Mrs. Lang) to look to
her mistress, who might perhaps get some sleep now that she had her
will and hounded him out to go over to Portchester about that silk.

Nothing was asked of this witness by the prosecution except the time
of Mr. Archfield's return. The question of jealousy was passed
over.

Of the pond apparition nothing was said. Anne had told Charles of
it, but no one could have proved its identity but Sedley, and his
share in it was too painful to be brought forward. Three other
ghost seers were brought forward: Mrs. Fellowes's maid, the sentry,
and the sexton; but only the sexton had ever seen Master Perry
alive, and he would not swear to more than that it was something in
his likeness; the sentry was already bound to declare it something
unsubstantial; and the maid was easily persuaded into declaring that
she did not know what she had seen or whether she had seen anything.

There only remained Mr. Fellowes to bear witness of his pupil's
entire innocence of political intrigues, together with a voluntary
testimony addressed to the court, that the youth had always appeared
to him a well-disposed but hitherto boyish lad, suddenly sobered and
rendered thoughtful by a shock that had changed the tenor of his
mind.

Mr. Baron Hatsel summed up in his dreary vacillating way. He told
the gentlemen of the jury that young men would be young men,
especially where pretty wenches were concerned, and that all knew
that there was bitterness where Whig and Tory were living nigh
together. Then he went over the evidence, at first in a tone
favourable to the encounter having been almost accidental, and the
stroke an act of passion. But he then added, it was strange, and he
did not know what to think of these young sparks and the young
gentlewoman all meeting in a lonely place when honest folks were
abed, and the hiding in the vault, and the state of the clothes were
strange matters scarce agreeing with what either prisoner or witness
said. It looked only too like part of a