urt and lie.

Twice, both at the beginning and the end of his speech, Mr. Lockwood
urged as a reason for the jury being tender in taking Peace's life that
he was in such a state of wickedness as to be quite unprepared to meet
death. Both times that his counsel put forward this curious plea, Peace
raised his eyes to heaven and exclaimed "I am not fit to die."

Mr. Justice Lopes in summing up described as an "absolute surmise" the
theory of the accidental discharge of the pistol. He asked the jury to
take Peace's revolver in their hands and try the trigger, so as to see
for themselves whether it was likely to go off accidentally or not. He
pointed out that the pistol produced might not have been the pistol used
at Banner Cross; at the same time the bullet fired in November, 1876,
bore marks such as would have been produced had it been fired from the
pistol taken from Peace at Blackheath in October, 1878. He said that Mr.
Lockwood had been perfectly justified in his attempt to discredit the
evidence of Mrs. Dyson, but the case did not rest on her evidence alone.
In her evidence as to the threats uttered by Peace in July, 1876, Mrs.
Dyson was corroborated by three other witnesses. In the Judge's opinion
it was clearly proved that no struggle or scuffle had taken place
before the murder. If the defence, he concluded, rested on no solid
foundation, then the jury must do their duty to the community at large
and by the oath they had sworn.

It was a quarter past seven when the jury retired. Ten minutes later
they came back into court with a verdict of guilty. Asked if he had
anything to say, Peace in a faint voice replied, "It is no use my
saying anything." The Judge, declining very properly to aggravate the
prisoner's feelings by "a recapitulation of any portion of the details
of what I fear, I can only call your criminal career," passed on him
sentence of death. Peace accepted his fate with composure.

Before we proceed to describe the last days of Peace on earth, let us
finish with the two women who had succeeded Mrs. Peace in his ardent
affections.

A few days after Peace's execution Mrs. Dyson left England for America,
but before going she left behind her a narrative intended to contradict
the imputations which she felt had been made against her moral
character. An Irishwoman by birth, she said that she had gone to America
when she was fifteen years old.

There she met and married Dyson, a civil engineer on the Atlan