Page:JM Barrie--My lady nicotine.djvu/200

194 been committed, but whether, under the circumstances, it is a criminal offense. The prisoner should never have been tried here at all. It was a case for the petty sessions. If the counsel cannot give some weighty reason for proceeding with further evidence, he will now put it to the jury.

After a few remarks from the counsel for the prosecution and the counsel for the defense, who calls attention to the prisoner's high and unblemished character, the judge sums up. It is for the jury, he says, to decide whether the prisoner has committed a criminal offense. That was the point; and in deciding it the jury should bear in mind the desirability of suppressing merely vexatious cases. People should not go to law over trifles. Still, the jury must remember that, without exception, all human life was sacred. After some further remarks from the judge, the jury (who deliberate for rather more than three-quarters of an hour) return a verdict of guilty. The prisoner is sentenced to a fine of five florins, or three days imprisonment.