company with Clark and Houseman, and then, with the help of the
latter, murder the unsuspecting Clark? The fact of his humble
origin makes his association with so low a ruffian as Houseman
the less remarkable. Vanity in all probability played a
considerable part in Aram's disposition. He would seem to have
thought himself a superior person, above the laws that bind
ordinary men. He showed at the end no consciousness of his
guilt. Being something of a philosopher, he had no doubt
constructed for himself a philosophy of life which served to
justify his own actions. He was a deist, believing in "one
almighty Being the God of Nature," to whom he recommended himself
at the last in the event of his "having done amiss." He
emphasised the fact that his life had been unpolluted and his
morals irreproachable. But his views as to the murder of Clark
he left unexpressed. He suggested as justification of it that
Clark had carried on an intrigue with his neglected wife, but he
never urged this circumstance in his defence, and beyond his own
statement there is no evidence of such a connection.

The Revd. John Selby Watson, headmaster of the Stockwell Grammar
School, at the age of sixty-five killed his wife in his
library one Sunday afternoon. Things had been going badly with
the unfortunate man. After more than twenty-five years' service
as headmaster of the school at a meagre salary of L400 a year,
he was about to be dismissed; the number of scholars had been
declining steadily and a change in the headmastership thought
necessary; there was no suggestion of his receiving any kind of
pension. The future for a man of his years was dark enough. The
author of several learned books, painstaking, scholarly, dull, he
could hope to make but little money from literary work. Under a