of identifying them with brutal outrages, now narrated under oath, at
which their hearts grew hard toward the unmanly perpetrator as they
listened.

Against the strong array of facts and fictions presented by the
prosecution the only circumstance that could be urged by the counsel for
the prisoner was, that the child was murdered along with the mother;
and this could only avail to strengthen a presumption of innocence, had
innocence been otherwise rendered probable; but when a conviction of
his guilt had been arrived at already, it merely served to increase the
atrocity of his crime, and to insure the enforcement of its penalty.

After a two days' struggle, in which every resource of reason and
eloquence was exhausted by the defendant's counsel, the judge proceeded
to a summing up which left the jury scarcely an option, even had they
been inclined to acquit. The latter withdrew in the midst of a deep and
solemn silence, while the respectful demeanor of the spectators showed
that at last a feeling of pity was beginning to steal into their hearts
for the unhappy gentleman, who still sat, as he had done during those
two long days of suspense, with his face buried in his hands, as
motionless as a statue. A profound stillness reigned in the hall during
the absence of the jury, broken only occasionally by a stifled sob from
some of the ladies present. After an absence of less than an hour the
jury returned and handed in a written verdict; and as the fatal word
"Guilty" fell from the white lips of the agitated clerk, the calmest
face in that whole vast assembly was that of him whom it doomed to
the ignominious death of a felon. And calm he had been ever since the
dreadful morning of his arrest; for the vial of wrath had then been
broken upon his head, and he had tasted the whole bitterness of an agony
which can be endured but a short while, and can never be felt a second