s and remember about the
candied fruit?" asked Silvia.

"There was nothing to recall the pecans to my mind until you mentioned
them just now, but I remember that Dr. Earl bought them first and
returned afterward and bought the fruit."

On redirect examination the district attorney got an admission from the
clerk that at several places in Boston, which she mentioned, boxes could
be obtained without any name on the lid, but that the Thompson store
never carried them.

The testimony of this clerk that the box presented by the district
attorney had not come from their store, was the only rift in the
otherwise dense cloud of incriminating evidence for the State, and the
prosecution closed its case with perceptible gloom hanging over every
person connected with the defense, and the jury was grave of face, as
men well may be who have the life of a fellow being in their hands.

The prosecution closed at four-thirty and Silvia asked for an
adjournment until morning to open her case. The request was granted, and
New York spent the night wondering what the "woman lawyer" would do the
next day. In the cafes, clubs, hotels, between acts in the theatres,
little else was discussed, and the consensus of opinion was that she was
doomed to defeat in this her first big trial.

Progressive women grieved over the outlook, for it spelled much of
disaster to the woman movement if she should be humiliatingly
vanquished. Her friends championed her cause as best they could,
vigorously, but not with the genuine enthusiasm they would like to have
felt.

New York had never before been so interested in a criminal trial.

CHAPTER XX

A WOMAN AND SPOOKS FIND A LETTER

The trial had been in progress some six days when the State rested its
case. None of the family or friends of the defendant underestimated the
impression created by the array of facts marshalled by the district
attorney. The evidence, though wholly circumstantial, was nevertheless
sinister and deadly.

Hilda Ramsey, white and worn, kissed her brother with quivering lips and
went out of the court leaning on her husband's arm, and making no
pretense of concealing her suffering. Neither her belief in her
brother's innocence, nor her confidence in Silvia's ability to prove it,
could counteract the pain and humiliation of the past weeks. Ramsey
wrung his brother-in-law's hand, and gave him a look more eloquent than
words, and Frank bade him brace up. "'Thrice is he armed