When she was placed in a chair, and mounted on a great book beside the judge-advocate—looking like a learned mushroom under her big white hat, her white flounced skirts fluttering out, her long white hose and slippered feet dangling—he wrote the questions and accommodated her with a blotting-pad and pen, and it may be doubted if ever hitherto a small bunch of fabric and millinery contained so much vainglory. In truth the triumph atoned for many a soundless day—to note the surprise on his solemn visage, between his Burnside whiskers, as she glanced covertly up into his face, watching the effect of her first answer, five or six lines of clear, round handwriting, sensibly expressed, and perfectly spelled. She wrote much the more legibly of the two, and once there occurred a break when one of the members of the court asked a question in writing, and she was constrained to put one hand before her face to laugh gleefully, for one of his capital letters was so bad—she was great on capitals—that she must needs ask what was meant by it.
Baynell, in reëxamination, himself wrote to ask what he had said when he was told that the ghost in the library was Julius Roscoe.
"Nothing," she wrote in answer, all unaware how she was destroying him. "Nothing at all. You just looked at me and then looked at Cousin Leonora. But Grandpa said, 'Oh, fie! oh, fie!' all the time."
Thus the extraordinary testimony was taken. The paper, with her answers in her round childish characters and flourishing capitals, all as plain as print and exhibiting a thorough comprehension of what she was asked, was handed to each of the members of the court-martial, here and there eliciting a murmur of surprise at her proficiency. The prosecution, that had practically broken down, now had the point of the sword at the throat of the defence.
There was naught further necessary but to confront the earlier witnesses with this episode. Mrs. Gwynn, recalled, stared in amazement for a moment as a question was put as to the significant event of the discovery of a ghost in the library, one afternoon. Then as the reminiscence grew clear to her mind, she rehearsed the circumstance, stating in great confusion that she had disregarded it at the time, and had forgotten it since.
So unimportant, was it?
She had thought it merely some folly of the children's; they were always taking silly little frights. She did remember that she had told Captain Baynell once before that the military salute was the child's sign for Julius Roscoe, and that she had repeated this information then. No—Captain Baynell made no search in the library where the supposed ghost was seen,—no,—nor elsewhere.
When Mrs. Gwynn, under the stress of these revelations, broke down and burst into tears, the eyes of the members of the court-martial intently regarding her were unsympathetic eyes, despite her beauty and charm,—the more unsympathetic because Judge Roscoe had also remembered these circumstances, stating, however, that they had not alarmed him, for Captain Baynell evidently did not understand.
"Is his knowledge of English, then, so limited?" he was ironically asked.
Old Ephraim, too, was able to recollect the fact of the child's disclosure of the presence of Julius Roscoe in the house to Captain Baynell,—declaring, though, that he himself had hindered its comprehension by upsetting the coffee urn full of scalding coffee, which he had just brought to the table where the group were sitting, thus effecting a diversion of interest.