hands, and if you decide to crush it quickly, you will save me much
suffering; as when having, perhaps unintentionally, mangled some
harmless insect, you mercifully turn back, grind it under your heel,
and end its torture. My life is too wretched now to induce me to defend
it, but there is something I hold far dearer, my reputation as an
honorable Christian woman; something I deem most sacred of all--the
unsullied purity of the name my father and mother bore. Because I am
innocent of every charge made against me, I owe it to my dead, to lift
their honored name out of the mire. I have pondered the testimony; and
the awful mass of circumstances that have combined to accuse me, seems
indeed so overwhelming, that as each witness came forward, I have asked
myself, am I the victim of some baleful destiny, placed in the grooves
of destroying fate-foreordained from the foundations of the world to
bear the burden of another's guilt? You have been told that I killed
Gen'l Darrington, and stole his money and jewels, and destroyed his
will, in order to possess his estate. Trustworthy witnesses have sworn
to facts, which I cannot deny, and you believe these facts; and yet,
while the snare tightens around my feet, and I believe you intend to
condemn me, I stand here, and look you in the face--as one day we
thirteen will surely stand at the final judgment--and in the name of
the God I love, and fear, and trust, I call you each to witness, that I
am innocent of every charge in the indictment. My hands are as
unstained, my soul is as unsullied by theft or bloodshed, as your
sinless babes cooing in their cradles.

"If you can clear your minds of the foul tenants thrust into them, try
for a little while to forget all the monstrous crimes you have heard
ascribed to me, and as you love your mothers, wives, daughters, go back
with me, leaving prejudice behind, and listen dispassionately to my
most melancholy story. The river of death rolls so close to my weary
feet, that I speak as one on the brink of eternity; and as I hope to
meet my God in peace, I shall tell you the truth. Sometimes it almost
shakes our faith in God's justice, when we suffer terrible
consequences, solely because we did our duty; and it seems to me
bitterly hard, inscrutable, that all my misfortunes should have come
upon me thick and fast, simply because I obeyed my mother. You,
fathers, say to your children, 'Do this for my sake,' and lovingly they
spring to accomplish