commands an honest man to speak the truth.


CHAPTER II.

THE MURDERESS ASKS QUESTIONS.

The first of the events which I must now relate was the
conviction of The Prisoner for the murder of her husband.

They had lived together in matrimony for little more than
two years. The husband, a gentleman by birth and education,
had mortally offended his relations in marrying a woman of
an inferior rank of life. He was fast declining into a state
of poverty, through his own reckless extravagance, at the time
when he met with his death at his wife's hand.

Without attempting to excuse him, he deserved, to my mind, some
tribute of regret. It is not to be denied that he was profligate
in his habits and violent in his temper. But it is equally true
that he was affectionate in the domestic circle, and, when moved
by wisely applied remonstrance, sincerely penitent for sins
committed under temptation that overpowered him. If his wife
had killed him in a fit of jealous rage--under provocation,
be it remembered, which the witnesses proved--she might have
been convicted of manslaughter, and might have received a light
sentence. But the evidence so undeniably revealed deliberate
and merciless premeditation, that the only defense attempted
by her counsel was madness, and the only alternative left to
a righteous jury was a verdict which condemned the woman to