l, at least once in his life. I know
I have; and I would much rather be hanged than have my letters read,"
laughingly replied Mr. Berners.

"But, by all my hopes of heaven, I never wrote one of those infernal
letters of the last parcel!" added Mr. Lytton.

"I never supposed you did. It will, no doubt, be possible to prove them
to be forgeries. If we can do that the whole prosecution breaks down,"
replied Mr. Berners.

"They _are_ forgeries!" said Alden Lytton, indignantly.

But that was more easily said than established.

A score of witnesses, one after the other, were called, and swore to the
hand writing of Mr. Alden Lytton in those letters.

Other witnesses of less importance followed--waiters and chambermaids
from the Blank House, Philadelphia, who swore to the fact that Mr.
Lytton and Mrs. Grey had taken rooms together at that house on the
fourteenth of September and had left it on the afternoon of the
fifteenth.

The prosecuting attorney said that he might call other witnesses who had
seen the parties meet as by appointment at the railway station at
Forestville and proceed thence to Richmond, and others again who had
seen them together in the Richmond and Washington steamer; but he would
forbear, for he felt convinced that the overwhelming amount of testimony
already given was more than sufficient to establish the first marriage.
The second and felonious marriage was a notorious fact; but for form's
sake it must be proved before the jury.

And then, to their extreme disgust, the Rev. Stephen Lyle, Joseph Brent
and John Lytton were successively called to testify that they had all
been present and witnessed the marriage of the accused, Alden Lytton and
Emma Angela Cavendish, on the fifteenth of the last February, at Blue
Cliff Hall, in this county and State.

John Lytton, who was the last of the three put upon the stand, came very
near being committed for contempt of court by saying:

"Yes, he had witnessed his nephew's, Mr. Alden Lytton's marriage with
Miss Cavendish, which he had a perfect right to marry her, never having
been married before. None of the Lyttonses were capable of any such
burglarious, bigamarious conduct as they accused his nephew of.
Everybody knew the Lyttonses. The Lyttonses were none of your upstart
judges"--this was aimed directly at the bench. "The Lyttonses was as old
as the flood, for that matter!" and so forth, and so forth.

The witness was not committed for this offense, bu