d to consider their verdict, and after about
three-quarters of an hour they returned into court.

"Gentlemen of the jury," said the clerk, "are you agreed upon your
verdict?"

"We are," said the foreman.

"Do you find the prisoner guilty or not guilty?"

"We find him guilty of wounding, with intent to inflict grievous bodily
harm."

Alan turned his face to the judge. The whole thing had been so precisely
rehearsed in his mind that no mere detail would take him by surprise. He
had expected the verdict, and it had come. Now he expected the sentence;
let it come, too. It would hardly be worse than he was prepared for.

To say that Mr. Justice Perkins was dissatisfied with the verdict would
be going a little too far; but he almost wished, when he heard it, that
he had dwelt at greater length upon the untrustworthy character of Mrs.
Walcott's evidence. However, he had told the jury that this was a matter
for their careful consideration; and he had always been wont, even more
than some of his brother judges, to leave full responsibility to his
juries in matters of opinion and belief.

"Alan Walcott," he said to the convicted man, "you have had a fair trial
before twelve of your peers, who have heard all the evidence brought
before them, whether favorable to you or the reverse. In the exercise of
their discretion, and actuated as they doubtless have been by the purest
motives, they have found you guilty of the crime laid to your charge. No
words of mine are necessary to make you appreciate this verdict.
Whatever the provocation which you may have received from this miserable
woman, however she may have forgotten her duty and tried you beyond
endurance--and I think that the evidence was clear enough on these
points--she was still your wife, and had a double claim upon your
forbearance. You might well have been in a worse position. From the
moment when you took that deadly weapon in your hands, everything was
possible. You might have been charged with wilful murder, if she had
died, or with intent to murder. You have been defended with great
ability; and if the jury believed, as they manifestly did, that your
defence, so fat as concerns the introduction of the dagger, could not be
maintained then they had no alternative but to find as they actually did
find. It only remains for me to pass upon you such a sentence, within
the discretion left me by the law, as seems to be appropriate to your
offence, and that is that you b