.
Jennings's room? his tall chest of drawers has fallen, I shouldn't
wonder: it was always unsafe to my mind. Listen, Jenny, will you?"

Jenny crept out, and, as laudable females sometimes do, listened at
Simon's key-hole.

"Lack-a-daisy, Sall, such a groaning and moaning; p'raps he's a-dying:
put on your cap again, and tell Jonathan to go and see."

Sarah did as she was bid, and Jonathan did as he was bid; and there was
Mr. Jennings on the floor, blue in the face, with a halter round his
neck.

The house was soon informed of the interesting event, and the bailiff
was nursed as tenderly as if he had been a sucking babe; fomentations,
applications, hot potations: but he soon came to again, without any hope
or wish to repeat the dread attempt: he was kept in bed, closely
watched, and Stephen Cramp, together with his rival, Eager, remained
continually in alternate attendance: until a day or two recovered him as
strong as ever. I told you, Simon Jennings, that your time was not yet
come.

CHAPTER XLIV.

THE TRIAL.

The trial now came on, and Roger Acton stood arraigned of
robbery and murder. I must hasten over lengthy legal technicalities,
which would only serve to swell this volume, without adding one iota to
its interest or usefulness. Nothing could be easier, nothing more worth
while, as a matter of mere book-making, than to tear a few pages out of
some musty record of Criminal Court Practice or other Newgate
Calendar-piece of authorship, and wade wearily through the length and
breadth of indictments, speeches, examinations, and all the other
learned clatter of six hours in the judgment-halls of law. If the reader
wishes for all this, let him pore over those unhealthy-looking books,
whose exterior is dove-coloured as the kirtle of innocence, but their
inwards black as the conscience of guilt; whitened sepulchres, all
spotless without; but within them are enshrined the quibbling knavery,
the distorted ingenuity, the mystifying learnedness, the warped and
warping views of truth, the lying, slandering, bad-excusing,
good-condemning principles and practices of those who cater for their
custom at the guiltiest felon's cell, and would glory in defending
Lucifer himself.

In the case of sheer innocence, indeed, as Roger's was--or in one of
much doubt and secresy, where the client denies all guilt, and the
counsel sees reason to believe him--let the advocate manfully battle out
his cause: but where crime has