Gastric fever set in, and he was lying tossing and raving in delirium, while Robert Penfold was being tried at the Central Criminal Court.
The trial occupied six hours, and could easily be made rather interesting.

But, for various reasons, with which it would not be good taste to trouble the reader, we decide to skim it.
The indictment contained two counts; one for forging the note of hand, the other for uttering it knowing it to be forged.
On the first count, the Crown was weak, and had to encounter the evidence of Undercliff, the distinguished expert, who swore that the hand which wrote "Robert Penfold" was not, in his opinion, the hand that had written the body of the instrument.

He gave many minute reasons in support of this.

And nothing of any weight was advanced contra.

The judge directed the jury to acquit the prisoner on that count.
But, on the charge of uttering, the evidence was clear, and on the question of knowledge it was, perhaps, a disadvantage to the prisoner that he was tried in England, and could not be heard in person, as he could have been in a foreign court; above all, his resistance to the officers eked out the presumption that he knew the note had been forged by some person or other, who was probably his accomplice.
The absence of his witness, Wardlaw junior, was severely commented on by his counsel; indeed, he appealed to the judge to commit the said Wardlaw for contempt of court.