circumstances, considering the blunders of the prosecution and the
ingenuous appearance of the defendant, the trial ended in a
disagreement, the jury standing eight to four for acquittal.

The District Attorney's office now took up a thorough investigation of
the case, with the result that on a second prosecution Mrs. Parker was
confronted with a mass of evidence which it was impossible for her to
refute. A boy named Wallace Sweeney, sentenced to the Elmira
Reformatory, was found to have been an active accomplice of the Parkers
for several years, and he was accordingly brought down to New York,
where he gave a complete history of his relations with them. His story
proved beyond any doubt that Mrs. Parker was the forger of the checks in
the possession of the District Attorney, and of many others beside, some
of them for very large amounts. The evidence of Sweeney was of itself
quite sufficient to warrant a conviction. To make assurance doubly sure,
however, the District Attorney upon the second trial moved a new
indictment, setting forth as the forgery a check signed "E. Bierstadt,"
so that when Parker took the stand, as he had done in the former trial
and testified that he was the forger, he found himself unable to write
this new signature, and hence his testimony went for nothing.

But even the testimony of Sweeney was that of an accomplice, requiring
corroboration, while that of Peabody remained the evidence of "a mere
policeman," eager to convict the defendant and "add another scalp to his
official belt." With an extraordinary accumulation of evidence the case
hinged on the veracity of these two men, to which was opposed the denial
of the defendant and her husband. It is an interesting fact that in the
final analysis of the case the jury were compelled to determine the
issue by evidence entirely documentary in character. It is also an
illustration of what tiny facts stamp whole masses of testimony as true