d a bundle of letters which he asked
Brassington to read. But Brassington declined, as reading was not one of
his accomplishments. The man then said that "he would make it a warm 'un
for those strange folks before morning--he would shoot both of them,"
and went off in the direction of Dyson's house. Brassington swore
positively that Peace was the stranger who had accosted him that night,
and Mr. Lockwood failed to shake him in his evidence. Nor could Mr.
Lockwood persuade the surgeon who was called to Dyson at the time of his
death to admit that the marks on the nose and chin of the dead man
could have been caused by a blow; they were merely abrasions of the skin
caused by the wounded man falling to the ground.

Evidence was then given as to threats uttered by Peace against the
Dysons in the July of 1876, and as to his arrest at Blackheath in the
October of 1878. The revolver taken from Peace that night was produced,
and it was shown that the rifling of the bullet extracted from Dyson's
head was the same as that of the bullet fired from the revolver carried
by Peace at the time of his capture.

Mr. Campbell Foster wanted to put in as evidence the card that Dyson
had flung into Peace's garden at Darnall requesting him not to interfere
with his family. This card had been found among the bundle of letters
dropped by Peace near the scene of the murder. Mr. Lockwood objected to
the admission of the card unless all the letters were admitted at the
same time. The Judge ruled that both the card and the letters were
inadmissible, as irrelevant to the issue; Mr. Lockwood had, he said,
very properly cross-examined Mrs. Dyson on these letters to test her
credibility, but he was bound by her answers and could not contradict
her by introducing them as evidence in the case.

Mr. Lockwood in his address to the jury did his best to persuade them
that the death of Dyson was the accidental result of a struggle between
Peace and himself. He suggested that Mrs. Dyson had left her house that
night for the purpose of meeting Peace, and that Dyson, who was jealous
of his wife's intimacy with him, had gone out to find her; that Dyson,
seeing Peace, had caught hold of him; and that the revolver had gone
off accidentally as Dyson tried to wrest it from his adversary.
He repudiated the suggestion of Mr. Foster that the persons he had
confronted with Mrs. Dyson in the course of his cross-examination had
been hired for a paltry sum to come into co