The Birkenhead News and Wirral General Advertiser. — 1908-07-18 (Birkenhead, Merseyside, England)

IWB.B unsually full. The Clubwas crowded to the dote. A great many of the country people, who were not within, easy driving distance, came in and sivannsed the small hotel and lodging-house accommodation. People came even from the capital to see Sir Pierce Rowan tried. Every day the streets were full of all manner of conveyances, from the landau with champing horses to the rough country cart; for the interest in the case was not confined to the upper classee. There was a great competition among the ladies for seats in court, and the Junior Bar wail smiled upon by Beauty in a way to intoxicate even legal hearts. There were Lamentations among some of the fair ones. for whom beauty and birth and money and wit could not purchase an entrance, since space was limited, that it was Judge Butler who was to preside. If it had been another judge, room might have been made for them in the vicinity of the Bench. had been trials, not half WO interesting as this, when the Bench had been like a bed of flower. for all the line garments; and people had forgotten the insanitary condition of the Court-house for the scent and the delicate odours the fine ladies brought in, as though they were flowers. But Judge Butler woe in this, as in all other matter., rigid and unbending. It was said that he was a woman-hater. He had had a romance in hie youth and thing* had gone awry; and all the brightness which had once been his had given place to a cold severity. He had married an unloved wife, said the gossips; he had not grieved when she died, but she had left him a eon. whom he adored. . . . .  -He hiicier-en-tli-e--1X;;-to Eton as though Ireland had no school good enough for him. People said that you would not have known the Judge when be was with his goldenhaired 6choolboy. The weight of the years and their secret bitterness would seem to roll away from hina when he was with his boy; he would seem to look at life through his boy's ingenuous eves. It was a thousand pities said the gossips that he had sent the boy to be so far away from him for the greater part of the year. When Judge Butler was named as the Judge for the Spring Assize, people said that fate had played Pierce Rowan an uncommonly nasty trick. It wee well-known that the bias of the Judge's mind would be against the abductor. The prisoner himself heard it in hie cell with a quiet resignation. He had braced himself to take whatever was to come: and he did not flinch nor cry out against the hardship of this additional bad chance. _ . _  It warn on the flise-sci;;;;Fia.3ter week the Assizes opened. On Thursday the case would come on before Judge Butler and a jury. and was expected to last three days. Priscilla had done her beat for her husband. At the last she had left her father's sick bed to be nearer the prison and the lawyers who had her husband's defence in hand. The trial was on the two counts, the abducting an heirext unlowfully, and shooting at with intent to murder. The famous counsel whom Priscilla had retained might be trusted to make the beet of their case. So far as the charge of forcible abduction of an heiress against her will waa concerned they looked to Priscilla herself as their best ally.  Her presence in the court, clad in her Quaker grey, seated as near to the prisoner a 3 she possibly could be, was the trump card for the defence, Mr. O'Molony, the senior counsel assured her; and ventured to suggest, rubbing hie hands softly together, that a little demonstration of affection on her part for the prisoner could not fail to make an imprownon on the susceptible jurymen.  (To be Cautioned.)