o the bold blonde on the stand, he
proceeded:

"Witness, tell the jury what occurred that night under the balcony of
Miss Levison's apartments at Castle Lone."

Rose Cameron threw another vindictive glance at the Duke of Hereward, and
commenced her narrative.

Now, as her story was substantially the same that has been already given
to the reader, it is not necessary to recapitulate it here. Only in one
respect it differed from the stories she had hitherto told to her
landlady or housekeeper, Mrs. Brown, of Westminster Road; as on this
occasion she reserved all allusion to any real or fancied marriage
between herself and the nobleman she claimed as her lover, and then
accused as the accomplice of thieves and assassins, in the murder and
robbery at Castle Lone, on the night preceding the day appointed for his
own marriage with its heiress!

It would be impossible to describe the effect of this terrible testimony
on the minds of all who heard it.

The Bench, the Bar, and the Jury, whom, it would seem, nothing in this
world had power to startle, astonish, or discompose, sat like statues.

Scarcely less immovable was the young Duke of Hereward, the subject
of this awful charge, who sat back in his seat with an air of grave
curiosity, and with the composure of a man who was master of the
situation.

But the crowd which filled the court-room seemed utterly confounded by
what they heard. Upon the whole, they either disbelieved this witness, or
distrusted their own ears. Their young laird, as she called the present
duke, was their model of all wisdom, goodness, magnanimity. Truly, they
had heard a rumor of some little love-making between the young laird and
a handsome shepherdess at Ben Lone, probably this same Rose Cameron; even
these rumors they did not fully credit; but that the noble young Duke of
Hereward should be the accomplice of thieves and murderers in the robbery
at Castle Lone, and the assassination of Sir Lemuel Levison, on the very
night preceding the morning appointed for his marriage with Sir Lemuel's
daughter!

Oh! the charge was too preposterous, as well as too horrible, to be
entertained for an instant.

Finally the prevailing opinion settled into this: that the young laird
had probably admired the handsome shepherdess a little, and had left her
for the heiress; and that, from jealousy and for revenge, the girl was
now perjuring herself to ruin her late lover.

Would her testimony be believed? Wou