short time to make himself acquainted with its
details. Personal pique and professional punctilio, of course, withheld
his predecessor from affording any further assistance or advice in a
business from which he had been so summarily dismissed. We cannot now
measure accurately the effect of this change of counsel; we only know,
that, at the time, it was considered most disastrous by those having the
best opportunities of judging.

But if Mr. ---- went into the cause under this disadvantage, he was
spurred on by the consideration that in his client he was defending a
friend: for they had been friends in youth, and, though long separated,
the tie had never been interrupted. Hence he threw himself into the case
with an ardor which money could never have inspired, and in the course
of the few remaining days had succeeded in mastering all its essential
points.

The interest excited by this second trial was as deep and far more
widely spread than by the first. Few proceedings of the kind in Kentucky
ever called together a crowd at once so large and intelligent, a great
proportion being lawyers, who had been induced to attend by the desire
to witness what it was expected would be one of the most brilliant
efforts of an eminent member of their fraternity.

The principal difference between the two trials was, that, on this
occasion, the testimony of the sister-in-law was much damaged by the
exposure both of her exaggerations and suppressions of important facts
touching the incident at the breakfast-table. Having incautiously
allowed herself to be drawn into particularizing so minutely as to fix
the exact date, and so positively as to render retraction impossible,
she was, to her own evident discomfiture, flatly contradicted by more
than one of those present on that occasion, who described the scene
as it actually occurred. Of course, after such a revelation of
untruthfulness, her whole testimony became liable to suspicion, the
more violent that the falsehood was plainly intentional. Moreover, the
defendant was now provided with evidence of the constant and intolerable
provocations to which he had been subjected during the whole of his
married life. Of this, however, the most moderate and guarded use was to
be made; because, while it was necessary, by exposing the true character
and habitual violence of his wife, to relieve the prisoner of that load
of public indignation which had been excited against him on account
of his alle