"They are some fragments of gold which I found in shaking the cocoa-nut
matting on the floor of gallery 27 the Saturday after the attempted
theft." I felt as if a mine had unexpectedly been sprung beneath me. How on
earth those fragments of soft gold could ever have got there I couldn't
imagine; but I saw the damaging nature of this extraordinary and
inexplicable coincidence in half a second. My counsel cross-examined all the witnesses for the prosecution, but
failed to elicit anything of any value from any one of them. On the
contrary, his questions put to the metallurgist of the Mint, who was
called to prove the quality of the gold, only brought out a very strong
opinion to the effect that the clippings were essentially similar in
character to the metal composing the clipped Wulfric. No wonder the jury seemed to think the case was going decidedly against
me. Then my counsel called his witnesses. I listened in the profoundest
suspense and expectation. The first witness was the ploughman from Lichfield. He was a
well-meaning but very puzzle-headed old man, and he was evidently
frightened at being confronted by so many clever wig-wearing barristers. Nevertheless, my counsel managed to get the true story out of him at
last with infinite patience, dexterity, and skill. The old man told us
finally how he had found the coins and sold them to me for five pounds;
and how one of them was of gold, with a queer head and goggle eyes
pointed full face upon its surface. When he had finished, the counsel for the Crown began his
cross-examination. He handed the ploughman a gold coin. "Did you ever
see that before?" he asked quietly. "To be sure I did," the man answered, looking at it open-mouthed. "What is it?" "It's the bit I sold Mr. Tait there--the bit as I got out o' the old
basin." Counsel turned triumphantly to the judge. "My lord," he said, "this
thing to which the witness swears is a gold piece of Ethelwulf of
Wessex, by far the commonest and cheapest gold coin of the whole
Anglo-Saxon period." It was handed to the jury side by side with the Wulfric of Mercia; and
the difference, as I knew myself, was in fact extremely noticeable. All
that the old man could have observed in common between them must have
been merely the archaic Anglo-Saxon character of the coinage. As I heard that, I began to feel that it was really all over. My counsel tried on the re-examination to shake the old man's faith in
his identification, and to make him transfer his story to the Wulfric
which he had actually sold me. But it was all in vain. The ploughman had
clearly the dread of perjury for ever before his eyes, and wouldn't go
back for any consideration upon his first sworn statement. "No, no,
mister," he said over and over again in reply to my counsel's bland
suggestion, "you ain't going to make me forswear myself for all your
cleverness." The next witness was Emily. She went into the box pale and red-eyed, but
very confident. My counsel examined her admirably; and she stuck to her
point with womanly persistence, that she had herself seen the clipped
Wulfric, and no other coin, on the morning of the supposed theft. She
knew it was so, because she distinctly remembered the inscription,
"Wulfric Rex," and the peculiar way the staring open eyes were
represented with barbaric puerility. Counsel for the Crown would only trouble the young lady with two
questions. The first was a painful one, but it must be asked in the
interests of justice. Were she and the prisoner at the bar engaged to be
married to one another? The answer came, slowly and timidly, "Yes." 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?" The foreman answered aloud, "Guilty." There was a piercing cry in the body of the court, and in a moment Emily
was carried out half fainting and half hysterical. The judge then calmly proceeded to pass sentence.