had been retained by the family of Mrs. Wilde to assist the
State's attorney in the prosecution. In the defence John Breckenridge
stood alone, needing no help; for all knew that whatever man could do in
behalf of his client would be done by him. The prisoner himself, upon
whom all eyes were turned, appeared dejected, but calm, like one who had
resigned all hope. The ominous foreboding, which had so overcome him on
the fatal morning of the murder, had never left him for a single moment.
From that hour he had looked upon himself as doomed, and had yielded
only a passive acquiescence in the measures of defence proposed by
his friends, awaiting the fate which he regarded as inevitable with
a patience almost apathetic. Adversity brought out in bold relief
qualities that might have sustained a cause whose victories are
martyrdoms, but how useless to one requiring active heroism!

All the damaging facts attending the discovery of the murder--the
failure of any signs of a stranger's presence in the apartment, the
peculiar behavior of the accused, the finding of his cravat on the neck
of the corpse, his acknowledgment of having worn it on the previous
day--were fully, but impartially, detailed by the witnesses for the
Commonwealth. No one could deny that the circumstances were strongly
against the prisoner: and these shadows, at best, and too often mere
delusive mirages of truth, the law allows to be weighed against the life
of a man. Against these shadows all the powers of Breckenridge were
taxed to the uttermost; and he might have succeeded, for his eloquence
was most persuasive, and his influence over the minds of the people
nearly unlimited, had not a false witness appeared to add strength by
deliberate perjuries to a case already strong. It was the ungrateful
sister-in-law of the accused, who had owed to him a home and an asylum
from the merited scorn of her family and the world, who now came forward
to complete the picture of her own detestable character, and put the
finishing hand to her unhallowed work, by swearing away that life which
her arts had rendered scarcely worth defending, could death have come
unaccompanied by disgrace. With a manner betraying suppressed, but
ill-concealed eagerness, and in language prompt and fluent, as if
reciting by rote a carefully kept journal, she went on to detail every
fault or neglect or impatient act of her relative, not sparing exposure
of the most delicate domestic events, at the sa