“Certainly not,—on that evening, at least.”
“Were you acquainted with his real name?” “No; O'Kelly told me, the day after the dinner, that the fellow had made his escape from London, doubtless dreading the consequences of his freak, and all trace of him was lost.”
“Should you be able to recognize him were you to see him again, Colonel Morris?”
“Unquestionably; his features were very marked, and I took especial notice of him as he sat at the card-table.”
“Will you cast your eyes about you through the court, and inform us if you see him here at present?”
The Colonel turned, and, putting his glass to his eye, scanned the faces in the gallery and along the crowded ranks beneath it. He then surveyed the body of the court, and at length fixed his glance on the inner bar, where, seated beside Mr. Foxley, I sat, pale and almost breathless with terror. “There he is! that man next but one to the pillar; that is the man!”
It was the second time that I had stood beneath the concentrated stare of a vast crowd of people; but oh, how differently this from the last time! No longer with aspects of compassionate interest and kind feeling, every glance now was the triumphant sparkle over detected iniquity, the haughty look of insolent condemnation.
“Tell me of this—what does this mean?” wrote my adviser, on a slip of paper, and handed it, unperceived, to me.
“It is true!” whispered I, in an accent that almost rent my heart to utter.
The commotion in the court was now great; the intense anxiety to catch a sight of me, added to the expressions of astonishment making up a degree of tumult that the officers essayed vainly to suppress. That the evidence thus delivered had been a great shock to my advisers was easily seen; and though Foxley proceeded to cross-examine the Colonel, the statement was not to be shaken.