strange misunderstanding, which drove from the support of the wretched
victim of Fate the only man who thoroughly understood the case in all
its minutest details, and would have been most likely to conduct it to
a happy termination. When the preparations for the last struggle were
almost completed, and the time set for the final trial drew near, Mr.
McC----, who, as Captain Wilde's brother-in-law, had been most active
and zealous in his behalf, was informed by some officious intermeddler
that Breckenridge had said in confidential conversation among his
friends, "that the case was entirely desperate, that he had no hope
whatever of altering the verdict by an appeal, and the family would save
money by letting the law take its course, there being no doubt of the
justice of the sentence." Mr. McC----, believing that he might rely on
the word of his informant, unfortunately, without making any inquiry as
to the truth of the tale, and without assigning any reason, wrote to Mr.
Breckenridge a curt letter of dismissal, and immediately employed George
---- to conduct the further defence. This gentleman, surpassed by no
man in Kentucky as a logician, lawyer, and orator, was inferior to the
discarded attorney in that great requisite of a jury-lawyer, personal
popularity, besides laboring under the disadvantage of being new to the
case, and having but a short time to make himself acquainted with its
details. Personal pique and professional punctilio, of course, withheld
his predecessor from affording any further assistance or advice in a
business from which he had been so summarily dismissed. We cannot now
measure accurately the effect of this change of counsel; we only know,
that, at the time, it was considered most disastrous by those having the
best opportunities of judging.

But if Mr. ---- went into the cause under this disadvantage, he was
spurred on by the consideration that in his client he was defending a
friend: for they had been friends in youth, and, though long separated,