His Other Wife: A Novel — page 314: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

326 ARRAIGNED. * << May it please the court and gentlemen of the jury, it is my painful duty to arraign before you to-day a man whom this community have honored and trusted. The crime imputed to the prisoner at the bar is that of a will- ful attempt to murder the wife of his bosom, by means the most detested and abhorred of any that blackens the cat- alogue of crimes. ‘‘Such an accusation naturally excites the indignation of honest minds against the criminal. I shall not en- deavor to increase this feeling which it is your duty to re- sist, for the nature of our present inquiry calls for your sober and dispassionate attention. “The offense with which the prisoner is charged is one easy of perpetration, but difficult of detection: The mur- derer by poison is not pointed out to justice by the bloody marks of his guilt, nor the fatal instrument of his crime; his horrid purpose is planned in secret, and may even be executed without his presence; his guilt can only be traced by circumstances; but circumstances do, and in this case will, I think, as plainly reveal the guilty purpose as if a hundred witnesses testified to the actual commis- sion of the crime. ‘‘Tt is my duty to state to you those circumstances, and to add to them such observations as the nature of the case fairly affords. *The author is largely indebted for her information, and some of her expressions in the above, to the legal report of a certain “kachelos English trial, ’ Eomicbooks: (E(@) mM =)