Counsel drew a long breath, and looked her hard in the face. Could she
read the inscription on that coin now produced?--handing her the
Ethelwulf.
Great heavens! I saw at once the plot to disconcert her, but was utterly
powerless to warn her against it.
Emily looked at it long and steadily. "No," she said at last, growing
deadly pale and grasping the woodwork of the witness-box convulsively;
"I don't know the character in which it is written."
Of course not: for the inscription was in the peculiar semi-runic
Anglo-Saxon letters! She had never read the words "Wulfric Rex" either.
I had read them to her, and she had carried them away vaguely in her
mind, imagining no doubt that she herself had actually deciphered them.
There was a slight pause, and I felt my blood growing cold within me.
Then the counsel for the Crown handed her again the genuine Wulfric, and
asked her whether the letters upon it which she professed to have read
were or were not similar to those of the Ethelwulf.
Instead of answering, Emily bent down her head between her hands, and
burst suddenly into tears.
I was so much distressed at her terrible agitation that I forgot
altogether for the moment my own perilous position, and I cried aloud,
"My lord, my lord, will you not interpose to spare her any further
questions?"
"I think," the judge said to the counsel for the Crown, "you might now
permit the witness to stand down."
"I wish to re-examine, my lord," my counsel put in hastily.
"No," I said in his ear, "no. Whatever comes of it, not another
question. I had far rather go to prison than let her suffer this
inexpressible torture for a single minute longer."
Emily was led down, still crying bitterly, into the body of the court,
and the rest of the proceedings went on uninterrupted.
The theory of the prosecution was a simple and plausible one. I had
bought a common Anglo-Saxon coin, probably an Ethelwulf, valued at about
twenty-two shillings, from the old Lichfield ploughman. I had thereupon
conceived the fraudulent idea of pretending that I had a duplicate of
the rare Wulfric. I had shown the Ethelwulf, clipped in a particular
fashion, to the lady whom I was engaged to marry. I had then defaced and
altered the genuine Wulfric at the Museum into the same shape with the
aid of my pocket nail-scissors. And I had finally made believe to drop
the coin accidentally upon the floor, while I had really secreted it in
my waistcoat pocket. The theory for the defence had broken down utterly.
And then there was the damning fact of the gold scrapings found in the
cocoa-nut matting of the British Museum, which was to me the one great
inexplicable mystery in the whole otherwise comprehensible
mystification.
I felt myself that the case did indeed look very black against me. But
would a jury venture to convict me on such very doubtful evidence?
The jury retired to consider their verdict. I stood in suspense in the
dock, with my heart loudly beating. Emily remained in the body of the
court below, looking up at me tearfully and penitently.
After twenty minutes the jury retired.
"Guilty or not guilty?"