station before more people are about."

CHAPTER II

THE CASE FOR THE CROWN

It was years since there had been a promise of such sensation at the Old
Bailey, and never, perhaps, was competition keener for the very few
seats available in that antique theatre of justice. Nor, indeed, could
the most enterprising of modern managers, with the star of all the
stages at his beck for the shortest of seasons, have done more to spread
the lady's fame, or to excite a passionate curiosity in the public mind,
than was done for Rachel Minchin by her official enemies of the
Metropolitan Police.

Whether these gentry had their case even more complete than they
pretended, when the prisoner was finally committed for trial, or whether
the last discoveries were really made in the ensuing fortnight, is now
of small account--though the point provided more than one excuse for
acrimony on the part of defending counsel during the hearing of the
case. It is certain, however, that shortly after the committal it became
known that much new evidence was to be forthcoming at the trial; that
the case against the prisoner would be found even blacker than before;
and that the witnesses were so many in number, and their testimony so
entirely circumstantial, that the proceedings were expected to occupy a
week.

Sure enough, the case was accorded first place in the November Sessions,
with a fair start on a Monday morning toward the latter end of the
month. In the purlieus of the mean, historic court, it was a morning not
to be forgotten, and only to be compared with those which followed
throughout the week. The prisoner's sex, her youth, her high bearing,
and the peculiar isolation of her position, without a friend to stand by
her in her need, all appealed to the popular imagination, and produced a
fascination which was only intensified by the equally general feeling
that no one else could have committed the crime. From the judge
downward, all connected with the case were pestered for days beforehand
with more or less unwarrantable applications for admission. And when the
time came, the successful suppliant had to elbow every yard of his way
from Newgate Street or Ludgate Hill; to pass three separate barriers
held by a suspicious constabulary; to obtain the good offices of the
Under Sheriff, through those of his liveried lackeys; and finally to
occupy the least space, on the narrowest of seats, in a varnished stall
filled with curiously fami