Until this moment of his entering the court, he knows nothing of the case--he has not yet received a brief. Mr. Daltera (you will remember that the scene is in Cork--the time 1827), the lame attorney, hands him a bulky brief, (which he puts, unread, into the bag,) and an abstract of the case, written on one sheet of paper. His blue eyes calmly glance over this case--he takes in, at that glance, all its bearings, and he quietly listens to the evidence of the accomplice. The cross-examination commences. Every eye is watchful--every ear on the _qui vive_--every man in court stretches forward to see the battle between "the Counsellor" and "the witness." You may see the prisoner with an eager glance of expectation--the witness with an evident sense of the coming crisis. The battle commences with anything but seriousness; O'Connell surprises the witness by his good humour, and instantly sets him at ease. He coaxes out of him a full confession of his own unworthiness,--he tempts him, by a series of facetious questions, into an admission of his "whole course of life,"--in a word, he draws from his lips an autobiography, in which the direst crimes are mingled with an occasional relief of feeling or of fun. The witness seems to exult in the "bad eminence" on which his admissions exalt him. He joins in the laugh at the quaintness of his language,--he scarcely shrinks from the universal shudders at the enormity of his crimes. By degrees he is led to the subject of the evidence he has just given, as an accomplice,--the coil is wound round him imperceptibly; fact after fact is weakened, until, finally, such doubt is thrown upon _all_ that he has said,--from the evident exaggeration of _part_,--that a less ingenious advocate than O'Connell might rescue the prisoner from conviction on _such_ evidence. The main witness having "broken down," (as much from the natural doubt and disgust excited in the minds of an Irish jury, by the circumstance of a _particeps criminis_ being evidence against one who may have been more sinned against than sinning,--who may have been seduced into the paths of error by the very man who now bears testimony against him,) the result of the trial is not very difficult to be foreseen. If there is any doubt, the matter is soon made clear by a few _alibi_ witnesses--practiced rogues with the most innocent aspects, who swear anything or everything to "get a friend out of trouble." The chances are ten to one that O'Connell brings off the prisoner. If he is not acquitted, he may, at least, be only found guilty on the minor plea of "manslaughter."