bore with wide-eyed shortsighted quietude and
absorption in the duty of truthful response. On being asked, rather sneeringly,
if the prisoner was not one of his flock? he answered, in that deeper tone which
made one of the most effective transitions of his varying voice -
    »Nay - would to God he were! I should then feel that the great virtues and
the pure life I have beheld in him were a witness to the efficacy of the faith I
believe in and the discipline of the church whereunto I belong.«
    Perhaps it required a larger power of comparison than was possessed by any
of that audience to appreciate the moral elevation of an Independent minister
who could utter those words. Nevertheless there was a murmur, which was clearly
one of sympathy.
    The next witness, and the one on whom the interest of the spectators was
chiefly concentrated, was Harold Transome. There was a decided predominance of
Tory feeling in the court, and the human disposition to enjoy the infliction of
a little punishment on an opposite party, was, in this instance, of a Tory
complexion. Harold was keenly alive to this, and to everything else that might
prove disagreeable to him in his having to appear in the witness-box. But he was
not likely to lose his self-possession, or to fail in adjusting himself
gracefully, under conditions which most men would find it difficult to carry
without awkwardness. He had generosity and candour enough to bear Felix Holt's
proud rejection of his advances without any petty resentment; he had all the
susceptibilities of a gentleman; and these moral qualities gave the right
direction to his acumen, in judging of the behaviour that would best secure his
dignity. Everything requiring self-command was easier to him because of Esther's
presence; for her admiration was just then the object which this well-tanned man
of the world had it most at heart to secure.
    When he entered the witness-box he was much admired by the ladies amongst
the audience, many of whom sighed a little at the thought of his wrong course in
politics. He certainly looked like a handsome portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence,
in which that remarkable artist had happily omitted the usual excess of honeyed
blandness mixed with alert intelligence, which is hardly compatible with the
state of man out of paradise. He stood not far off Felix; and the two Radicals
certainly made a striking contrast. Felix might have come from the hands of a
sculptor in the later Roman period, when the plastic impulse was stirred by the
grandeur of barbaric forms - when rolled collars were not yet conceived, and
satin