th her fine sewing, and would soon have
been independent of any financial aid. But the sorrow which hung over
her, and which all this time was and still is a mystery to me, seemed
to dominate her life, as I will presently show you.

"It was the ghost of the old environment, of the old parasitical age,
when women were so easily enslaved with the promise of idle luxury and
transient caresses, stalking into the midst of a nobler effort and
beckoning her backward while yet the understanding and courage were not
sufficiently seasoned. Later I shall go into these things more fully.

"I will prove to you by the proper Federal officials that, owing to a
change of design by the government, the ten-cent stamps on this package,
bearing this particular vignette, could only be purchased in three or
four post-offices in the United States for several months before and at
the time the package was mailed, and the only place east of the
post-office at St. Louis was in Providence, Rhode Island, and I shall
also prove that the defendant has not been in Providence in four years.
You will notice that stamps to the value of sixty cents were placed on
the parcel, when half that amount would have been sufficient, showing
that whoever mailed it did not care to have it officially weighed.

"Another circumstance worthy your attention is that poisoning by
hydrocyanic acid is so easily recognized that it has seldom been used
for purposes of murder, except in cases where the person committing the
crime felt safe as to his own identity, and desired to make it appear
that some one else had done the deed."

She paused in her recital and cast a glance at a large, muscular man,
seated among a group of witnesses for the defense. He gave her an almost
imperceptible nod in the affirmative, and she went on slowly and
impressively:

"What is more, gentlemen of the jury, this candied fruit was not
purchased in Boston, but in Providence, and the person buying it
insisted on a perfectly plain box, without any name upon it; he also
bought several separate pieces of similar fruit."

There was a buzz of excitement in the human hive, which the bailiff
suppressed by a sharp rap of his gavel. Those who had caught the signal
turned their eyes from Silvia to the large man, but there was nothing in
his impassive demeanor to attract attention.

The defendant and his family were evidently as much at sea as were the
others in the courtroom as to the significance of th