prosecution made his very effective speech.
    »That's Mr. Carson, the father, sitting behind Serjeant Wilkinson!«
    »What a noble-looking old man he is! so stern and inflexible, with such
classical features! Does he not remind you of some of the busts of Jupiter?«
    »I am more interested by watching the prisoner. Criminals always interest
me. I try to trace in the features common to humanity some expression of the
crimes by which they have distinguished themselves from their kind. I have seen
a good number of murderers in my day, but I have seldom seen one with such marks
of Cain on his countenance as the man at the bar.«
    »Well, I am no physiognomist, but I don't think his face strikes me as bad.
It certainly is gloomy and depressed, and not unnaturally so, considering his
situation.«
    »Only look at his low, resolute brow, his downcast eye, his white compressed
lips. He never looks up, - just watch him.«
    »His forehead is not so low if he had that mass of black hair removed, and
is very square, which some people say is a good sign. If others are to be
influenced by such trifles as you are, it would have been much better if the
prison barber had cut his hair a little previous to the trial; and as for
downcast eye, and compressed lip, it is all part and parcel of his inward
agitation just now; nothing to do with character, my good fellow.«
    Poor Jem! His raven hair (his mother's pride, and so often fondly caressed
by her fingers), was that, too, to have its influence against him?
    The witnesses were called. At first they consisted principally of policemen;
who, being much accustomed to giving evidence, knew what were the material
points they were called on to prove, and did not lose the time of the court in
listening to anything unnecessary.
    »Clear as day against the prisoner,« whispered one attorney's clerk to
another.
    »Black as night, you mean,« replied his friend; and they both smiled.
    »Jane Wilson! who's she? some relation, I suppose, from the name.«
    »The mother, - she that is to prove the gun part of the case.«
    »Oh, ay - I remember! Rather hard on her, too, I think.«
    Then both were silent, as one of the officers of the court ushered Mrs.
Wilson into the witness-box