Explore "The Hocussing of Cigarette" by Baroness Emmuska Orczy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"I doubt whether in all the annals of criminal procedure there ever occurred a more dramatic moment than that when so strange a ray of daylight was shed on the mysterious outrage on Cigarette. The magistrate, having dismissed Mrs. Keeson, hardly dared to look across at the trainer, who was a personal friend of his, and who had just received such a cruel blow through this terrible charge against his only son-for at that moment I doubt if there were two people in that court who did not think that Mrs. Keeson had just sworn a false oath, and that both she and her son had been in the stables that night-for what purpose only they and their own conscience could tell.
"Alice Image and Charles Palk were both discharged; and it is greatly to the credit of Cockram that in the midst of his joy in seeing his sweetheart safe he still remained very gloomy and upset. As for Mr. Keeson, he must have suffered terribly at all this mud cast at his only son. He had been wounded in what he worshipped more than anything else in the world-his family honour. What was the use of money and the old estates if such a stain rested upon his name?