They could joke, and yet they could feel! He himself betrayed neither weakness, but sat waiting patiently and idly listening, with the same grim jaw and the same inscrutable eye with which he had watched the prisoner and the jury alternately throughout the week.

And when the latter at last returned, and then the former, it was the same subtle stare that he again bent upon them both in turn.
The jury had been absent but forty minutes after all; and their expedition seemed as ill an omen as their nervous and responsible faces.
There was a moment's hush, another moment of prophetic murmurs, and then a stillness worthy of its subsequent description in every newspaper.

The prisoner was standing in the front of the dock, a female warder upon either hand.

The lightning pencil of the new journalist had its will of her at last.

For Mrs.Minchin had dispensed not only with the chair which she had occupied all the week, but also with the heavy veil which she had but partially lifted during her brief sojourn in the witness-box, and never once in the dock.