"Then came Mr. Williams. I had seen him for a moment in setting out, and
was struck with his strange, lost, dreamy look. There is something very
haggard and mournful in his countenance; and, though he has naturally
the same fine features as his eldest sister, his cheeks are hollow, his
eyes almost glassy, and his beard, which is longer than the Colonel's,
very grey. He gave me the notion of the wreck of a man, stunned and
crushed, and never thoroughly alive again; but when he stood in the
witness-box, face to face with the traitor, he was very different; he
lifted up his head, his eyes brightened, his voice became clear, and his
language terse and concentrated, so that I could believe in his having
been the very able man he was described to be. I am sure Maddox must
have quailed under his glance, there was something so loftily innocent
in it, yet so wistful, as much as to say, 'how could you abuse my
perfect confidence?' Mr. Williams denied having received the money,
written the letter, or even thought of making the request. They showed
him the impression of two seals. He said one was made with a seal-ring
given him by Colonel Keith, and lost some time before he went abroad;
the other, with one with which he had replaced it, and which he
produced,--he had always worn it on his finger. They matched exactly
with the impressions; and there was a little difference in the hair of
the head upon the seal that was evident to every one. It amused the
boys extremely to see some of the old jurymen peering at them with their
glasses. He was asked where he was on the 7th of September (the date of
the letter), and he referred to some notes of his own, which enabled him
to state that on the 6th he had come back to Prague from a village with
a horrible Bohemian name--all cs and zs--which I will not attempt to
write, though much depended on the number of the said letters.
"The rest of the examination must have been very distressing, for
Maddox's counsel pushed him hard about his reasons for not returning to
defend himself, and he was obliged to tell how ill his wife was, and how
terrified; and they endeavoured to make that into an admission that he
thought himself liable. They tried him with bits of the handwriting, and
he could not always tell which were his own;--but I think every one must
have been struck with his honourable scrupulosity in explaining every
doubt he had.
"Other people were called in about the writing, but Alison Williams was
the clearest of all. She was never puzzled by any scrap they showed her,
and, moreover, she told of Maddox having sent for her brother's address,
and her having copied it from a letter of Mrs. Williams's, which she
produced, with the wrong spelling, just as it was in the forgery. The
next day had come a letter from the brother, which she showed, saying
that they were going to leave the place sooner than they had intended,
and spelling it right. She gave the same account of the seals, and
nothing ever seemed to disconcert her. My boys were so much excited
about their 'own Miss Williams,' that I was quite afraid they would
explode into a cheer.