n this or any other jury, but he could
not help recalling the fact that a jury in that town once committed the
unpardonable fault, the crime, he had almost said, of refusing to find
a prisoner guilty against whom well confirmed evidence had been brought.
It had been his advice to the Minister for Justice, so glaring was
the miscarriage of justice to which he referred, that the whole of the
jurymen who had sat upon that trial should be struck off the roll. This
was accordingly done.

He, the judge, was perfectly convinced in his own mind that no
impropriety of this sort was likely to be committed by the intelligent,
respectable jury whom he saw before him; but it was his duty to warn
them that, in his opinion, they could not bring in any verdict but
'Guilty' if they respected their oaths. He should leave the case
confidently in their hands, again impressing upon them that they could
only find one verdict if they believed the evidence.

. . . . .

The jury all went out. Then another case was called on, and a fresh jury
sworn in for to try it. We sat in the dock. The judge told Starlight he
might sit down, and we waited till they came back. I really believe that
waiting is the worst part of the whole thing, the bitterest part of
the punishment. I've seen men when they were being tried for their
lives--haven't I done it, and gone through it myself?--waiting there an
hour--two hours, half through the night, not knowing whether they was to
be brought in guilty or not. What a hell they must have gone through
in that time--doubt and dread, hope and fear, wretchedness and despair,
over and over and over again. No wonder some of 'em can't stand it, but
keeps twitching and shifting and getting paler and turning faint when
the jury comes back, and they think they see one thing or the other
written in their faces. I've seen a strong man drop down like a dead
body when the judge opened his mouth to pass sentence on him. I've seen
'em faint, too, when the foreman of the jury said 'Not guilty.' One
chap, he was an innocent up-country fellow, in for his first bit of
duffing, like we was once, he covered his face with his hands when he
found he was let off, and cried like a child. All sorts and kinds of
different ways men takes it. I was in court once when the judge asked
a man who'd just been found guilty if he'd anything to say why he
shouldn't pass sentence of death upon him. He'd killed a woman, cut her
throat, and a r