Chapter I: Part 1

THE EXPERIENCES OF A BARRISTER,

AND

Confessions of an Attorney.

BY SAMUEL WARREN

1880

CONTENTS.

THE MARCH ASSIZE

THE NORTHERN CIRCUIT

THE CONTESTED MARRIAGE

THE MOTHER AND SON

"THE WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS"

ESTHER MASON

THE MARRIAGE SETTLEMENT

THE SECOND MARRIAGE

CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE

"THE ACCOMMODATION BILL"

THE REFUGEE

THE LIFE POLICY

BIGAMY OR NO BIGAMY

JANE ECCLES

"EVERY MAN HIS OWN LAWYER"

THE CHEST OF DRAWERS

THE PUZZLE

THE ONE BLACK SPOT

THE GENTLEMAN BEGGAR

A FASHIONABLE FORGER

THE YOUNG ADVOCATE

A MURDER IN THE TIME OF THE CRUSADES

CONFESSIONS OF AN ATTORNEY.

THE MARCH ASSIZE.

Something more than half a century ago, a person, in going along Holborn, might have seen, near the corner of one of the thoroughfares which diverge towards Russell Square, the respectable-looking shop of a glover and haberdasher named James Harvey, a man generally esteemed by his neighbors, and who was usually considered well to do in the world. Like many London tradesmen, Harvey was originally from the country. He had come up to town when a poor lad, to push his fortune, and by dint of steadiness and civility, and a small property left him by a distant relation, he had been able to get into business on his own account, and to attain that most important element of success in London--"a connection." Shortly after setting up in the world, he married a young woman from his native town, to whom he had been engaged ever since his school-days; and at the time our narrative commences he was the father of three children.

James Harvey's establishment was one of the best frequented of its class in the street. You could never pass without seeing customers going in or out. There was evidently not a little business going forward. But although, to all appearance, a flourishing concern, the proprietor of the establishment was surprised to find that he was continually pinched in his circumstances. No matter what was the amount of business transacted over the counter, he never got any richer.

At the period referred to, shop-keeping had not attained that degree of organization, with respect to counter-men and cashiers, which now distinguishes the great houses of trade. The primitive till was not yet superseded. This was the weak point in Harvey's arrangements; and not to make a needless number of words about it, the poor man was regularly robbed by a shopman, whose dexterity in pitching a guinea into the drawer, so as to make it jump, unseen, with a jerk into his hand, was worthy of Herr Dobler, or any other master of the sublime art of jugglery.

Good-natured and unsuspicious, perhaps also not sufficiently vigilant, Harvey was long in discovering how he was pillaged. Cartwright, the name of the person who was preying on his employer, was not a young man. He was between forty and fifty years of age, and had been in various situations, where he had always given satisfaction, except on the score of being somewhat gay and somewhat irritable. Privately, he was a man of loose habits, and for years his extravagances had been paid for by property clandestinely abstracted from his too-confiding master. Slow to believe in the reality of such wickedness, Mr. Harvey could with difficulty entertain the suspicions which began to dawn on his mind. At length all doubt was at an end. He detected Cartwright in the very act of carrying off goods to a considerable amount. The man was tried at the Old Bailey for the offence; but through a technical informality in the indictment, acquitted.

Unable to find employment, and with a character gone, the liberated thief became savage, revengeful, and desperate. Instead of imputing his fall to his own irregularities, he considered his late unfortunate employer as the cause of his ruin; and now he bent all the energies of his dark nature to destroy the reputation of the man whom he had betrayed and plundered. Of all the beings self-delivered to the rule of unscrupulous malignity, with whom it has been my fate to come professionally in contact, I never knew one so utterly fiendish as this discomfited pilferer. Frenzied with his imaginary wrongs, he formed the determination to labor, even if it were for years, to ruin his victim. Nothing short of death should divert him from this the darling object of his existence.

Animated by these diabolical passions, Cartwright proceeded to his work. Harvey, he had too good reason to know, was in debt to persons who had made him advances; and by means of artfully-concocted anonymous letters, evidently written by some one conversant with the matters on which he wrote, he succeeded in alarming the haberdasher's creditors. The consequences were--demands of immediate payment, and, in spite of the debtor's explanations and promises, writs, heavy law expenses, ruinous sacrifices, and ultimate bankruptcy. It may seem almost too marvelous for belief, but the story of this terrible revenge and its consequences is no fiction. Every incident in my narrative is true, and the whole may be found in hard outline in the records of the courts with which a few years ago I was familiar.

The humiliated and distressed feelings of Harvey and his family may be left to the imagination. When he found himself a ruined man, I dare say his mental sufferings were sufficiently acute. Yet he did not sit down in despair. To re-establish himself in business in England appeared hopeless; but America presented itself as a scene where industry might find a reward; and by the kindness of some friends, he was enabled to make preparations to emigrate with his wife and children. Towards the end of February he quitted London for one of the great seaports, where he was to embark for Boston. On arriving there with his family, Mr. Harvey took up his abode at a principal hotel. This, in a man of straitened means, was doubtless imprudent; but he afterwards attempted to explain the circumstance by saying, that as the ship in which he had engaged his passage was to sail on the day after his arrival, he had preferred incurring a slight additional expense rather than that his wife--who was now, with failing spirits, nursing an infant--should be exposed to coarse associations and personal discomfort. In the expectation, however, of being only one night in the hotel, Harvey was unfortunately disappointed. Ship-masters, especially those commanding emigrant vessels, were then, as now, habitual promise-breakers; and although each succeeding sun was to light them on their way, it was fully a fortnight before the ship stood out to sea. By that time a second and more dire reverse had occurred in the fortunes of the luckless Harvey.

Cartwright, whose appetite for vengeance was but whetted by his first success, had never lost sight of the movements of his victim; and now he had followed him to the place of his embarkation, with an eager but undefined purpose of working him some further and more deadly mischief. Stealthily he hovered about the house which sheltered the unconscious object of his malicious hate, plotting, as he afterwards confessed, the wildest schemes for satiating his revenge. Several times he made excuses for calling at the hotel, in the hope of observing the nature of the premises, taking care, however, to avoid being seen by Mr. Harvey or his family. A fortnight passed away, and the day of departure of the emigrants arrived without the slightest opportunity occurring for the gratification of his purposes. The ship was leaving her berth; most of the passengers were on board; Mrs. Harvey and the children, with nearly the whole of the luggage, were already safely in the vessel; Mr. Harvey only remained on shore to purchase some trifling article, and to settle his bill at the hotel on removing his last trunk. Cartwright had tracked him all day; he could not attack him in the street; and he finally followed him to the hotel, in order to wreak his vengeance on him in his private apartment, of the situation of which he had informed himself.

Harvey entered the hotel first, and before Cartwright came up, he had gone down a passage into the bar to settle the bill which he had incurred for the last two days. Not aware of this circumstance, Cartwright, in the bustle which prevailed, went up stairs to Mr. Harvey's bedroom and parlor, in neither of which, to his surprise, did he find the occupant; and he turned away discomfited. Passing along towards the chief staircase, he perceived a room of which the door was open, and that on the table there lay a gold watch and appendages. Nobody was in the apartment: the gentleman who occupied it had only a few moments before gone to his bed-chamber for a brief space. Quick as lightning a diabolical thought flashed through the brain of the villain, who had been baffled in his original intentions. He recollected that he had seen a trunk in Harvey's room, and that the keys hung in the lock. An inconceivably short space of time served for him to seize the watch, to deposit it at the bottom of Harvey's trunk, and to quit the hotel by a back stair, which led by a short cut to the harbor. The whole transaction was done unperceived, and the wretch at least departed unnoticed.

Having finished his business at the bar, Mr. Harvey repaired to his room, locked his trunk, which, being of a small and handy size, he mounted on his shoulder, and proceeded to leave the house by the back stair, in order to get as quickly as possible to the vessel. Little recked he of the interruption which was to be presented to his departure. He had got as far as the foot of the stair with his burden, when he was overtaken by a waiter, who declared that he was going to leave the house clandestinely without settling accounts. It is proper to mention that Mr. Harvey had incurred the enmity of this particular waiter in consequence of having, out of his slender resources, given him too small a gratuity on the occasion of paying a former bill, and not aware of the second bill being settled, the waiter was rather glad to have an opportunity of charging him with a fraudulent design. In vain Mr. Harvey remonstrated, saying he had paid for every thing. The waiter would not believe his statement, and detained him "till he should hear better about it."

"Let me go, fellow; I insist upon it," said Mr. Harvey, burning with indignation. "I am already too late."

"Not a step, till I ask master if accounts are squared."

At this moment, while the altercation was at the hottest, a terrible ringing of bells was heard, and above stairs was a loud noise of voices, and of feet running to and fro. A chambermaid came hurriedly down the stair, exclaiming that some one had stolen a gold watch from No. 17, and that nobody ought to leave the house till it was found. The landlord also, moved by the hurricane which had been raised, made his appearance at the spot where Harvey was interrupted in his exit.

"What on earth is all this noise about, John?" inquired the landlord of the waiter.

"Why, sir, I thought it rather strange for any gentleman to leave the house by the back way, carrying his own portmanteau, and so I was making a little breeze about it, fearing he had not paid his bill, when all of a sudden Sally rushes down the stair and says as how No. 17 has missed his gold watch, and that no one should quit the hotel."

No. 17, an old, dry-looking military gentlemen, in a particularly high passion, now showed himself on the scene, uttering terrible threats of legal proceedings against the house for the loss he had sustained.

Harvey was stupified and indignant, yet he could hardly help smiling at the pother. "What," said he, "have I to do with all this? I have paid for everything; I am surely entitled to go away if I like. Remember, that if I lose my passage to Boston, you shall answer for it."

"I very much regret detaining you, sir," replied the keeper of the hotel; "but you hear there has been a robbery committed within the last few minutes, and as it will be proper to search every one in the house, surely you, who are on the point of departure, will have no objections to be searched first, and then be at liberty to go?"

There was something so perfectly reasonable in all this, that Harvey stepped into an adjoining parlor, and threw open his trunk for inspection, never doubting that his innocence would be immediately manifest.

The waiter, whose mean rapacity had been the cause of the detention, acted as examiner. He pulled one article after another out of the trunk, and at length--horror of horrors!--held up the missing watch with a look of triumph and scorn!

"Who put that there?" cried Harvey in an agony of mind which can be better imagined than described. "Who has done me this grievous wrong? I know nothing as to how the watch came into my trunk."

No one answered this appeal. All present stood for a moment in gloomy silence.

"Sir," said the landlord to Harvey on recovering from his surprise, "I am sorry for you. For the sake of a miserable trifle, you have brought ruin and disgrace on yourself. This is a matter which concerns the honor of my house, and cannot stop here. However much it is against my feelings, you must go before a magistrate."

"By all means," added No. 17, with the importance of an injured man. "A pretty thing that one's watch is not safe in a house like this!"

"John, send Boots for a constable," said the landlord.

Harvey sat with his head leaning on his hand. A deadly cold perspiration trickled down his brow. His heart swelled and beat as if it would burst. What should he do? His whole prospects were in an instant blighted. "Oh God! do not desert a frail and unhappy being: give me strength to face this new and terrible misfortune," was a prayer he internally uttered. A little revived, he started to his feet, and addressing himself to the landlord, he said, "Take me to a magistrate instantly, and let us have this diabolical plot unraveled. I court inquiry into my character and conduct."

"It is no use saying any more about it," answered the landlord; "here is Boots with a constable, and let us all go away together to the nearest magistrate. Boots, carry that trunk. John and Sally, you can follow us."

And so the party, trunk and all, under the constable as conductor, adjourned to the house of a magistrate in an adjacent street. There the matter seemed so clear a case of felony--robbery in a dwelling-house--that Harvey, all protestations to the contrary, was fully committed for trial at the ensuing March assizes, then but a few days distant.

At the period at which these incidents occurred, I was a young man going on my first circuits. I had not as yet been honored with perhaps more than three or four briefs, and these only in cases so slightly productive of fees, that I was compelled to study economy in my excursions. Instead of taking up my residence at an inn when visiting ------, a considerable seaport, where the court held its sittings, I dwelt in lodgings kept by a widow lady, where, at a small expense, I could enjoy perfect quietness, free from interruption.

On the evening after my arrival on the March circuit of the year 17--, I was sitting in my lodgings perusing a new work on criminal jurisprudence, when the landlady, after tapping at the door, entered my room.

"I am sorry to trouble you, sir," said she; "but a lady has called to see you about a very distressing law case--very distressing indeed, and a very strange case it is too. Only, if you could be so good as to see her?"

"Who is she?"

"All I know about it is this: she is a Mrs. Harvey. She and her husband and children were to sail yesterday for Boston. All were on board except the husband; and he, on leaving the large hotel over the way, was taken up for a robbery. Word was in the evening sent by the prisoner to his wife to come on shore, with all her children and the luggage; and so she came back in the pilot boat, and was in such a state of distress, that my brother, who is on the preventive service, and saw her land, took pity on her, and had her and her children and things taken to a lodging on the quay. As my brother knows that we have a London lawyer staying here, he has advised the poor woman to come and consult you about the case."

"Well, I'll see what can be done. Please desire the lady to step in."

A lady was shortly shown in. She had been pretty, and was so still, but anxiety was pictured in her pale countenance. Her dress was plain, but not inelegant; and altogether she had a neat and engaging appearance.

"Be so good as to sit down," said I, bowing; "and tell me all you would like to say."

The poor woman burst into tears; but afterwards recovering herself, she told me pretty nearly the whole of her history and that of her husband.

Lawyers have occasion to see so much duplicity, that I did not all at once give assent to the idea of Harvey being innocent of the crime of which he stood charged.

"There is something perfectly inexplicable in the case," I observed, "and it would require sifting. Your husband, I hope has always borne a good character?"

"Perfectly so. He was no doubt unfortunate in business; but he got his certificate on the first examination; and there are many who would testify to his uprightness." And here again my client broke into tears, as if overwhelmed with her recollections and prospects.

"I think I recollect Mr. Harvey's shop," said I soothingly. "It seemed a very respectable concern; and we must see what can be done. Keep up your spirits; the only fear I have arises from the fact of Judge A ---- being on the bench. He is usually considered severe, and if exculpatory evidence fail, your husband may run the risk of being--transported." A word of more terrific import, with which I was about to conclude, stuck unuttered in my throat "Have you employed an attorney?" I added.

"No; I have done nothing as yet, but apply to you, to beg of you to be my husband's counsel."

"Well, that must be looked to. I shall speak to a local agent, to prepare and work out the case; and we shall all do our utmost to get an acquittal. To-morrow I will call on your husband in prison."

Many thanks were offered by the unfortunate lady, and she withdrew.

I am not going to inflict on the reader a detailed account of this remarkable trial, which turned, as barristers would say, on a beautiful point of circumstantial evidence. Along with the attorney, a sharp enough person in his way, I examined various parties at the hotel, and made myself acquainted with the nature of the premises. The more we investigated, however, the more dark and mysterious--always supposing Harvey's innocence--did the whole case appear. There was not one redeeming trait in the affair, except Harvey's previous good character; and good character, by the law of England, goes for nothing in opposition to facts proved to the satisfaction of a jury. It was likewise most unfortunate that A ---- was to be the presiding judge. This man possessed great forensic acquirements, and was of spotless private character; but, like the majority of lawyers of that day--when it was no extraordinary thing to hang twenty men in a morning at Newgate--he was a staunch stickler for the gallows as the only effectual reformer and safeguard of the social state. At this time he was but partially recovered from a long and severe indisposition, and the traces of recent suffering were distinctly apparent on his pale and passionless features.

Harvey was arraigned in due form; the evidence was gone carefully through; and everything, so far as I was concerned, was done that man could do. But at the time to which I refer, counsel was not allowed to address the court on behalf of the prisoner--a practice since introduced from Scotland--and consequently I was allowed no opportunity to draw the attention of the jury to the total want of any direct evidence of the prisoner's guilt. Harvey himself tried to point out the unlikelihood of his being guilty; but he was not a man gifted with dialectic qualities, and his harangue fell pointless on the understandings of the twelve common-place individuals who sat in the jury-box. The judge finally proceeded to sum the evidence, and this he did emphatically _against_ the prisoner--dwelling with much force on the suspicious circumstance of a needy man taking up his abode at an expensive fashionable hotel; his furtive descent from his apartments by the back stairs; the undoubted fact of the watch being found in his trunk; the improbability of any one putting it there but himself; and the extreme likelihood that the robbery was effected in a few moments of time by the culprit, just as he passed from the bar of the hotel to the room which he had occupied. "If," said he to the jury, in concluding his address, "you can, after all these circumstances, believe the prisoner to be innocent of the crime laid to his charge, it is more than I can do. The thing seems to me as clear as the sun at noonday. The evidence, in short, is irresistible; and if the just and necessary provisions of the law are not enforced in such very plain cases, then society will be dissolved, and security for property there will be none. Gentlemen, retire and make up your verdict."

The jury were not disposed to retire. After communing a few minutes together, one of them stood up and delivered the verdict: it was _Guilty!_ The judge assumed the crowning badge of the judicial potentate--the black cap; and the clerk of arraigns asked the prisoner at the bar, in the usual form, if he had anything to urge why sentence of death should not be passed upon him.

Poor Harvey! I durst scarcely look at him. As the sonorous words fell on his ear, he was grasping nervously with shaking hands at the front of the dock. He appeared stunned, bewildered, as a man but half-awakened from a hideous dream might be supposed to look. He had comprehended, though he had scarcely heard, the verdict; for on the instant, the voice which but a few years before sang to him by the brook side, was ringing through his brain, and he could recognize the little pattering feet of his children, as, sobbing and clinging to their shrieking mother's dress, she and they were hurried out of court The clerk, after a painful pause, repeated the solemn formula. By a strong effort the doomed man mastered his agitation; his pale countenance lighted up with indignant fire, and firm and self-possessed, he thus replied to the fearful interrogatory:--

"Much could I say in the name, not of mercy, but of justice, why the sentence about to be passed on me should not be pronounced; but nothing, alas! that will avail me with you, pride-blinded ministers of death. You fashion to yourselves--out of your own vain conceits do you fashion--modes and instruments, by the aid of which you fondly imagine to invest yourselves with attributes which belong only to Omniscience; and now I warn you--and it is a voice from the tomb, in whose shadow I already stand, which addresses you--that you are about to commit a most cruel and deliberate murder."

He paused, and the jury looked into each other's eyes for the courage they could not find in their own hearts. The voice of conscience spoke, but was only for a few moments audible. The suggestions that what grave parliaments, learned judges, and all classes of "respectability" sanctioned, could not be wrong, much less murderous or cruel, silenced the "still, small" tones, and tranquilized the startled jurors.

"Prisoner at the bar," said the judge with his cold, calm voice of destiny, "I cannot listen to such observations: you have been found guilty of a heinous offence by a jury of your countrymen after a patient trial. With that finding I need scarcely say I entirely agree. I am as satisfied of your guilt as if I had seen you commit the act with my own bodily eyes. The circumstance of your being a person who, from habits and education, should have been above committing so base a crime, only aggravates your guilt. However, no matter who or what you have been, you must expiate your offence on the scaffold. The law has very properly, for the safety of society, decreed the punishment of death for such crimes: our only and plain duty is to execute that law."

The prisoner did not reply: he was leaning with his elbows on the front of the dock, his bowed face covered with his outspread hands; and the judge passed sentence of death in the accustomed form. The court then rose, and a turnkey placed his hand upon the prisoner's arm, to lead him away. Suddenly he uncovered his face, drew himself up to his full height--he was a remarkably tall man--and glared fiercely round upon the audience, like a wild animal at bay. "My lord," he cried, or rather shouted, in an excited voice. The judge motioned impatiently to the jailor, and strong hands impelled the prisoner from the front of the dock. Bursting from them, he again sprang forward, and his arms outstretched, whilst his glittering eye seemed to hold the judge spell-bound, exclaimed, "My lord, before another month has passed away, _you_ will appear at the bar of another world, to answer for the life, the innocent life, which God bestowed upon me, but which you have impiously cast away as a thing of naught and scorn!" He ceased, and was at once borne off. The court, in some confusion, hastily departed. It was thought at the time that the judge's evidently failing health had suggested the prophecy to the prisoner. It only excited a few days' wonder, and was forgotten.

The position of a barrister in such circumstances is always painful. I need hardly say that my own feelings were of a very distressing kind. Conscious that if the unfortunate man really was guilty, he was at least not deserving of capital punishment, I exerted myself to procure a reprieve. In the first place I waited privately on the judge; but he would listen to no proposal for a respite. Along with a number of individuals--chiefly of the Society of Friends--I petitioned the crown for a commutation of the sentence. But being unaccompanied with a recommendation from the judge, the prayer of our petition was of course disregarded: the law, it was said, must take its course. How much cruelty has been exercised under shelter of that remorseless expression!

I would willingly pass over the succeeding events. Unable to save his life, I endeavored to soothe the few remaining hours of the doomed convict, and frequently visited him in the condemned cell. The more I saw of him, the deeper grew my sympathy in his case, which was that of no vulgar felon. "I have been a most unfortunate man," said he one day to me. "A destiny towards ruin in fortune and in life has pursued me. I feel as if deserted by God and man; yet I know, or at least would persuade myself, that Heaven will one day vindicate my innocence of this foul charge. To think of being hanged like a dog for a crime at which my soul revolts! Great is the crime of those imbecile jurors and that false and hard-hearted judge, who thus, by an irreversible decree, consign a fellow-mortal to a death of violence and disgrace. Oh God, help me--help me to sustain that bitter, bitter hour!" And then the poor man would throw himself on his bed and weep.

But the parting with his wife and children. What pen can describe that terrible interview! They knelt in prayer, their wobegone countenances suffused in tears, and with hands clasped convulsively together. The scene was too harrowing and sacred for the eye of a stranger. I rushed from the cell, and buried myself in my lodgings, whence I did not remove till all was over. Next day James Harvey, a victim of circumstantial evidence, and of a barbarous criminal code, perished on the scaffold.

Three weeks afterwards, the court arrived at a populous city in the west of England. It had in the interval visited another assize town, and there Judge A ---- had left three for execution. At the trials of these men, however, I had not attended. So shocked had been my feelings with the mournful event which had taken place at ------, that I had gone into Wales for the sake of change of scene. After roaming about for a fortnight amidst the wild solitudes of Caernarvonshire, I took the stage for the city which I knew the court was to visit, and arrived on the day previous to the opening of the assizes.

"Well, are we to have a heavy calendar?" I inquired next morning of a brother barrister on entering the court.

"Rather light for a March assize," replied the impatient counsel as he bustled onward. "There's Cartwright's case--highway robbery--in which I am for the prosecution. He'll swing for it, and perhaps four or five others."

"A good hanging judge is A ----," said the under-sheriff, who at this moment joined us, rubbing his hands, as if pleased with the prospect of a few executions. "No chance of the prophecy yonder coming to pass I suppose?"

"Not in the least," replied the bustling counsel. "He never looked better. His illness has gone completely off. And this day's work will brighten him up."

Cartwright's trial came on. I had never seen the man before, and was not aware that this was the same person whom Harvey had incidentally told me he had discharged for theft; the truth being, that till the last moment of his existence, that unfortunate man had not known how much he had been a sacrifice to this wretch's malice.

The crime of which the villain now stood accused was that of robbing a farmer of the paltry sum of eight shillings, in the neighborhood of Ilfracombe. He pleaded not guilty, but put in no defence. A verdict was recorded against him, and in due form A ---- sentenced him to be hanged. An expression of fiendish malignancy gleamed over the haggard features of the felon as he asked leave to address a few words to the court. It was granted. Leaning forward, and raising his heavy, scowling eyes to the judge, he thus began:--"There is something on my mind, my lord--a dreadful crime--which, as I am to die for the eight shillings I took from the farmer, I may as well confess. You may remember Harvey, my lord, whom you hanged the other day at--?"

"What of him, fellow?" replied the judge, his features suddenly flushing crimson.

"Why, my lord, only this--that he was as innocent of the crime for which you hanged him as the child yet unborn! I did the deed! I put the watch in his trunk!" And to the unutterable horror of the entire court he related the whole particulars of the transaction, the origin of his grudge against Harvey, and his delight on bringing him to the gallows.

"Inhuman, execrable villain!" gasped the judge in extreme excitement.

"Cleverly done, though! Was it not, my lord?" rejoined the ruffian with bitter irony. "The evidence, you know, was irresistible; the crime as clear as the sun at noonday; and if in such plain cases, the just and necessary law was not enforced, society would be dissolved, and there would be no security for property! These were your words, I think. How on that occasion I admired your lordship's judgment and eloquence! Society would be dissolved if an innocent man were not hanged! Ha!--ha!--ha! Capital!--capital!" shouted the ferocious felon with demoniac glee, as he marked the effect of his words on the countenance of the judge.

"Remove the prisoner!" cried the sheriff. An officer was about to do so; but the judge motioned him to desist. His lordship's features worked convulsively. He seemed striving to speak, but the words would not come.

"I suppose, my lord," continued Cartwright in low and hissing tones, as the shadow of unutterable despair grew and settled on his face--"I suppose you know that his wife destroyed herself. The coroner's jury said she had fallen accidentally into the water, _I_ know better. She drowned herself under the agonies of a broken heart! I saw her corpse, with the dead baby in its arms; and then I felt, knew, that I was lost! Lost, doomed to everlasting perdition! But, my lord,"--and here the wretch broke into a howl wild and terrific--"_we_ shall go down together--down to where your deserts are known. A--h--h! that pinches you, does it? Hound of a judge! legal murderer! coward! I spurn and spit upon thee!" The rest of the appalling objurgation was inarticulate, as the monster, foaming and sputtering, was dragged by an officer from the dock.

Judge A ---- had fallen forwards on his face, fainting and speechless with the violence of his emotions. The black cap had dropped from his brow. His hands were stretched out across the bench, and various members of the bar rushed to his assistance. The court broke up in frightful commotion.

Two days afterwards the county paper had the following announcement:--

"Died at the Royal Hotel, ------, on the 27th instant, Judge A ----, from an access of fever supervening upon a disorder from which he had imperfectly recovered."

The prophecy was fulfilled!

THE NORTHERN CIRCUIT.

About the commencement of the present century there stood, near the centre of a rather extensive hamlet, not many miles distant from a northern seaport town, a large, substantially-built, but somewhat straggling building, known as Craig Farm (popularly _Crook_ Farm) House. The farm consisted of about one hundred acres of tolerable arable and meadow land; and at the time I have indicated, belonged to a farmer of the name of Armstrong. He had purchased it about three years previously, at a sale held, in pursuance of a decree of the High Court of Chancery, for the purpose of liquidating certain costs incurred in the suit of Craig _versus_ Craig, which the said high court had nursed so long and successfully, as to enable the solicitor to the victorious claimant to incarcerate his triumphant client for several years in the Fleet, in "satisfaction" of the charges of victory remaining due after the proceeds of the sale of Craig Farm had been deducted from the gross total. Farmer Armstrong was married, but childless; his dame, like himself, was a native of Devonshire. They bore the character of a plodding, taciturn, morose-mannered couple: seldom leaving the farm except to attend market, and rarely seen at church or chapel, they naturally enough became objects of suspicion and dislike to the prying, gossiping villagers, to whom mystery or reserve of any kind was of course exceedingly annoying and unpleasant.

Soon after Armstrong was settled in his new purchase another stranger arrived, and took up his abode in the best apartments of the house. The new-comer, a man of about fifty years of age, and evidently, from his dress and gait, a sea-faring person, was as reserved and unsocial as his landlord. His name, or at least that which he chose to be known by, was Wilson. He had one child, a daughter, about thirteen years of age, whom he placed at a boarding-school in the adjacent town. He seldom saw her; the intercourse between the father and daughter being principally carried on through Mary Strugnell, a widow of about thirty years of age, and a native of the place. She was engaged as a servant to Mr. Wilson, and seldom left Craig Farm except on Sunday afternoons, when, if the weather was at all favorable, she paid a visit to an aunt living in the town; there saw Miss Wilson; and returned home usually at half-past ten o'clock--later rather than earlier. Armstrong was occasionally absent from his home for several days together, on business, it was rumored, for Wilson; and on the Sunday in the first week of January 1802, both he and his wife had been away for upwards of a week, and were not yet returned.

About a quarter-past ten o'clock on that evening the early-retiring inhabitants of the hamlet were roused from their slumbers by a loud, continuous knocking at the front door of Armstrong's house: louder and louder, more and more vehement and impatient, resounded the blows upon the stillness of the night, till the soundest sleepers were awakened. Windows were hastily thrown open, and presently numerous footsteps approached the scene of growing hubbub. The unwonted noise was caused, it was found, by Farmer Armstrong, who accompanied by his wife, was thundering vehemently upon the door with a heavy black-thorn stick. Still no answer was obtained. Mrs. Strugnell, it was supposed, had not returned from town; but where was Mr. Wilson, who was almost always at home both day and night? Presently a lad called out that a white sheet or cloth of some sort was hanging out of one of the back windows. This announcement, confirming the vague apprehensions which had begun to germinate in the wise heads of the villagers, disposed them to adopt a more effectual mode of obtaining admission than knocking seemed likely to prove. Johnson, the constable of the parish, a man of great shrewdness, at once proposed to break in the door. Armstrong, who, as well as his wife, was deadly pale, and trembling violently, either with cold or agitation, hesitatingly consented, and crowbars being speedily procured, an entrance was forced, and in rushed a score of excited men. Armstrong's wife, it was afterwards remembered, caught hold of her husband's arm in a hurried, frightened manner, whispered hastily in his ear, and then both followed into the house.

"Now, farmer," cried Johnson, as soon as he had procured a light, "lead the way up stairs."

Armstrong, who appeared to have somewhat recovered from his panic, darted at once up the staircase, followed by the whole body of rustics. On reaching the landing-place, he knocked at Mr. Wilson's bedroom door. No answer was returned. Armstrong seemed to hesitate, but the constable at once lifted the latch; they entered, and then a melancholy spectacle presented itself.

Wilson, completely dressed, lay extended on the floor a lifeless corpse. He had been stabbed in two places in the breast with some sharp-pointed instrument. Life was quite extinct. The window was open. On farther inspection, several bundles containing many of Wilson's valuables in jewelry and plate, together with clothes, shirts, silk handkerchiefs, were found. The wardrobe and a secretary-bureau had been forced open. The assassins had, it seemed, been disturbed, and had hurried off by the window without their plunder. A hat was also picked up in the room, a shiny, black hat, much too small for the deceased. The constable snatched it up, and attempted to clap it on Armstrong's head, but it was not nearly large enough. This, together with the bundles, dissipated a suspicion which had been growing in Johnson's mind, and he roughly exclaimed, "You need not look so scared, farmer; it's not you: that's quite clear."

To this remark neither Armstrong nor his wife answered a syllable, but continued to gaze at the corpse, the bundles, and the broken locks, in bewildered terror and astonishment. Presently some one asked if any body had seen Mrs. Strugnell?

The question roused Armstrong, and he said, "She is not come home: her door is locked."

"How do you know that?" cried the constable, turning sharply round, and looking keenly in his face. "How do you know that?"

"Because--because," stammered Armstrong, "because she always locks it when she goes out."

"Which is her room?"

"The next to this."

They hastened out, and found the next door was fast.

"Are you there, Mrs. Strugnell?" shouted Johnson.

There was no reply.

"She is never home till half-past ten o'clock on Sunday evenings," remarked Armstrong in a calmer voice.

"The key is in the lock on the inside," cried a young man who had been striving to peep through the key-hole.

Armstrong, it was afterwards sworn, started as if he had been shot; and his wife again clutched his arm with the same nervous, frenzied gripe as before.

"Mrs. Strugnell, are you there?" once more shouted the constable. He was answered by a low moan. In an instant the frail door was burst in, and Mrs. Strugnell was soon pulled out, apparently more dead than alive, from underneath the bedstead, where she, in speechless consternation, lay partially concealed. Placing her in a chair, they soon succeeded--much more easily, indeed, than they anticipated--in restoring her to consciousness.

Nervously she glanced round the circle of eager faces that environed her, till her eyes fell upon Armstrong and his wife, when she gave a loud shriek, and muttering, "They, _they_ are the murderers!" swooned, or appeared to do so, again instantly.

The accused persons, in spite of their frenzied protestations of innocence, were instantly seized and taken off to a place of security; Mrs. Strugnell was conveyed to a neighbor's close by; the house was carefully secured; and the agitated and wondering villagers departed to their several homes, but not, I fancy, to sleep any more for that night.

The deposition made by Mrs. Strugnell at the inquest on the body was in substance as follows:--

"On the afternoon in question she had, in accordance with her usual custom, proceeded to town. She called on her aunt, took tea with her, and afterwards went to the Independent Chapel. After service, she called to see Miss Wilson, but was informed that, in consequence of a severe cold, the young lady was gone to bed. She then immediately proceeded homewards, and consequently arrived at Craig Farm more than an hour before her usual time. She let herself in with her latch key, and proceeded to her bedroom. There was no light in Mr. Wilson's chamber, but she could hear him moving about in it. She was just about to go down stairs, having put away her Sunday bonnet and shawl, when she heard a noise, as of persons entering by the back way, and walking gently across the kitchen floor. Alarmed as to who it could be, Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong not being expected home for several days, she gently closed her door, and locked it. A few minutes after, she heard stealthy steps ascending the creaking stairs, and presently her door was tried, and a voice in a low hurried whisper said, "Mary, are you there?" She was positive it was Mr. Armstrong's voice, but was too terrified to answer. Then Mrs. Armstrong--she was sure it was she--said also in a whisper, and as if addressing her husband, "She is never back at this hour." A minute or so after there was a tap at Mr. Wilson's door. She could not catch what answer was made; but by Armstrong's reply, she gathered that Mr. Wilson had lain down, and did not wish to be disturbed. He was often in the habit of lying down with his clothes on. Armstrong said, "I will not disturb you, sir; I'll only just put this parcel on the table." There is no lock to Mr. Wilson's door. Armstrong stepped into the room, and almost immediately she heard a sound as of a violent blow, followed by a deep groan and then all was still. She was paralyzed with horror and affright. After the lapse of a few seconds, a voice--Mrs. Armstrong's undoubtedly--asked in a tremulous tone if "all was over?" Her husband answered "Yes: but where be the keys of the writing-desk kept?" "In the little table-drawer," was the reply. Armstrong then came out of the bedroom, and both went into Mr. Wilson's sitting apartment. They soon returned, and crept stealthily along the passage to their own bedroom on the same floor. They then went down stairs to the kitchen. One of them--the woman, she had no doubt--went out the back way, and heavy footsteps again ascended the stairs. Almost dead with fright, she then crawled under the bedstead, and remembered no more till she found herself surrounded by the villagers."

In confirmation of this statement, a large clasp-knife belonging to Armstrong, and with which it was evident the murder had been perpetrated, was found in one corner of Wilson's bedroom; and a mortgage deed, for one thousand pounds on Craig Farm, the property of Wilson, and which Strugnell swore was always kept in the writing-desk in the front room, was discovered in a chest in the prisoner's sleeping apartment, together with nearly one hundred and fifty pounds in gold, silver, and county bank-notes, although it was known that Armstrong had but a fortnight before declined a very advantageous offer of some cows he was desirous of purchasing, under the plea of being short of cash. Worse perhaps than all, a key of the back-door was found in his pocket, which not only confirmed Strugnell's evidence, but clearly demonstrated that the knocking at the door for admittance, which had roused and alarmed the hamlet, was a pure subterfuge. The conclusion, therefore, almost universally arrived at throughout the neighborhood was, that Armstrong and his wife were the guilty parties; and that the bundles, the broken locks, the sheet hanging out of the window, the shiny, black hat, were, like the knocking, mere cunning devices to mislead inquiry.

The case excited great interest in the county, and I esteemed myself professionally fortunate in being selected to hold the brief for the prosecution. I had satisfied myself, by a perusal of the depositions, that there was no doubt of the prisoners' guilt, and I determined that no effort on my part should be spared to insure the accomplishment of the ends of justice. I drew the indictment myself; and in my opening address to the jury dwelt with all the force and eloquence of which I was master upon the heinous nature of the crime, and the conclusiveness of the evidence by which it had been brought home to the prisoners. I may here, by way of parenthesis, mention that I resorted to a plan in my address to the jury which I have seldom known to fail. It consisted in fixing my eyes and addressing my language to each juror one after the other. In this way each considers the address to be an appeal to his individual intelligence, and responds to it by falling into the views of the barrister. On this occasion the jury easily fell into the trap. I could see that I had got them into the humor of putting confidence in the evidence I had to produce.

The trial proceeded. The cause of the death was scientifically stated by two medical men. Next followed the evidence as to the finding of the knife in the bedroom of the deceased; the discovery of the mortgage deed, and the large sum of money, in the prisoners' sleeping apartment; the finding the key of the back-door in the male prisoner's pocket; and his demeanor and expressions on the night of the perpetration of the crime. In his cross-examination of the constable, several facts perfectly new to me were elicited by the very able counsel for the prisoners. Their attorney had judiciously maintained the strictest secrecy as to the nature of the defence, so that it now took me completely by surprise. The constable, in reply to questions by counsel, stated that the pockets of the deceased were empty; that not only his purse, but a gold watch, chain, and seals, which he usually wore, had vanished, and no trace of them had as yet been discovered. Many other things were also missing. A young man of the name of Pearce, apparently a sailor, had been seen in the village once or twice in the company of Mary Strugnell; but he did not notice what sort of hat he generally wore; he had not seen Pearce since the night the crime was committed; had not sought for him.

Mary Strugnell was the next witness. She repeated her previous evidence with precision and apparent sincerity, and then I abandoned her with a mixed feeling of anxiety and curiosity, to the counsel for the defence. A subtle and able cross-examination of more than two hours' duration followed; and at its conclusion, I felt that the case for the prosecution was so damaged, that a verdict of condemnation was, or ought to be, out of the question. The salient points dwelt upon, and varied in every possible way, in this long sifting, were these:--"What was the reason she did not return in the evening in question to her aunt's to supper as usual?"

"She did not know, except that she wished to get home."

"Did she keep company with a man of the name of Pearce?"

"She had walked out with him once or twice."

"When was the last time?"

"She did not remember."

"Did Pearce walk with her home on the night of the murder?"

"No."

"Not part of the way?"

"Yes; part of the way."

"Did Pearce sometimes wear a black, shiny hat?"

"No--yes: she did not remember."

"Where was Pearce now?"

"She didn't know."

"Had he disappeared since that Sunday evening?"

"She didn't know."

"Had she seen him since?"

"No."

"Had Mr. Wilson ever threatened to discharge her for insolence to Mrs. Armstrong?"

"Yes; but she knew he was not in earnest."

"Was not the clasp-knife that had been found always left in the kitchen for culinary purposes?"

"No--not always; generally--but not _this _time that Armstrong went away, she was sure."

"Mary Strugnell, you be a false-sworn woman before God and man!" interrupted the male prisoner with great violence of manner.

The outbreak of the prisoner was checked and rebuked by the judge, and the cross-examination soon afterwards closed. Had the counsel been allowed to follow up his advantage by an address to the jury, he would, I doubt not, spite of their prejudices against the prisoners, have obtained an acquittal; but as it was, after a neutral sort of charge from the judge, by no means the ablest that then adorned the bench, the jurors, having deliberated for something more than half an hour, returned into court with a verdict of "guilty" against both prisoners, accompanying it, however, with a strong recommendation to mercy!

"Mercy!" said the judge. "What for? On what ground?"

The jurors stared at each other and at the judge: they had no reason to give! The fact was, their conviction of the prisoners' guilt had been very much shaken by the cross-examination of the chief witness for the prosecution, and this recommendation was a compromise which conscience made with doubt. I have known many such instances.

The usual ridiculous formality of asking the wretched convicts what they had to urge why sentence should not be passed upon them was gone through; the judge, with unmoved feelings, put on the fatal cap; and then a new and startling light burst upon the mysterious, bewildering affair.

"Stop, my lord!" exclaimed Armstrong with rough vehemence. "Hear me speak! I'll tell ye all about it; I will indeed, my lord. Quiet, Martha, I tell ye. It's I, my lord, that's guilty, not the woman. God bless ye, my lord; not the wife! Doant hurt the wife, and I'se tell ye all about it. I _alone_ am guilty; not, the Lord be praised, of murder, but of robbery!"

"John!--John!" sobbed the wife, clinging passionately to her husband, "let us die together!"