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A singular circumstance then arose in the case. The object in

hand being to show that the prisoner went down, with some

fellow-plotter untracked, in the Dover mail on that Friday night

in November five years ago, and got out of the mail in the night,

as a blind, at a place where he did not remain, but from which he

travelled back some dozen miles or more, to a garrison and

dockyard, and there collected information; a witness was called

to identify him as having been at the precise time required, in

the coffee-room of an hotel in that garrison-and-dockyard town,

waiting for another person. The prisoner's counsel was

cross-examining this witness with no result, except that he had

never seen the prisoner on any other occasion, when the wigged

gentleman who had all this time been looking at the ceiling of

the court, wrote a word or two on a little piece of paper,

screwed it up, and tossed it to him.