appeared with profound reluctance. Indeed, she left the box, and rejoined the husband who had brought her there, in tears; and so the defence made a first meretricious point.
Nor was it the last. Jonathan Butterfield, unlike his relatives, had not been called at the previous examination; but he was now; and his feelings were worked upon in the same deft fashion. As, however, there was no jury to be simultaneously touched, all this was wasted dexterity; but it looked neat in the newspapers; and (what was better, but unintentional) imposed upon poor Tom, and gave him momentary heart.
Meanwhile the shoes and hat had done real damage; and this evidence was the more deleterious from being new to all. Guilty flight and ultimate capture had been fully dealt with on the previous occasion; but the equally incriminating interim was only now filled in, by the officers who had chased and lost a desperate housebreaker in the small hours of Saturday, but only afterwards connected him with the Hampstead murderer. The connection was established by the beaver hidden but discovered in the empty house, and by the shoes left on either side of the nursery-garden gate. Only two officers appeared; the third was in hospital, and one of the two had a bandaged head.
The medical evidence had been taken on the Monday morning; so had that of the crafty householder of Kew; yet his powdered head was again in court, and his humorous, sly smile looked as benevolent as ever, only broader and more subtly droll. Tom heard this public benefactor taking snuff in every pause.
The other new witness was one Richard Vale, who brought a whiff of cognac into the crowded court. His
