to attribute all sorts of evil to one who has by any means
incurred their hostility, and are never satisfied until they have
blackened the whole character in which they have found one offensive
quality, the family difficulties of the unpopular official soon became a
theme of common scandal, all the blame, of course, being laid upon him.
This state of things, disagreeable in itself, proved most unfortunate in
its influence on his subsequent fate; for, had he retained his previous
popularity in the county, the last deplorable catastrophe would
certainly never have happened: since every lawyer knows full well, that,
in capital cases especially, juries are merely the exponents of public
sentiment, and that the power of any judge to cause the excited
sympathies of a whole community to sink into calm indifference at the
railing of a jury-box is about as effective as was the command of the
Dane in arresting the in-rolling waters of the ocean. This is peculiarly
true in this country, where the people, both in theory and in fact, are
so completely sovereign that the institutions of government are only
instruments, having little capability of independent, and none at all of
antagonistic action. The skilful advocate, therefore, always watches the
crowd of eager faces without the bar, with eye as anxious and far more
prophetic than that with which he studies the formal countenances of the
panel whom he directly addresses.

There was one circumstance, arising indirectly from his public
employment, that exercised no trivial influence upon Captain Wilde's
fate. On one occasion, while engaged with a brother-official in
arranging their books preparatory to the annual settlement, his wife,
becoming enraged because he failed to attend instantly to her orders
concerning some trifling domestic matter, rushed into his study and
caught up an armful of papers, which she attempted to throw into the
fire. The documents were of great importance; and to prevent her
carrying her childish purpose into execution, her husband was obliged
to seize her quickly and violently, and drag her from the hearth. The
reader will hardly recognize this incident in the form in which it was
afterward detailed from the witness-stand; and it is only on account
of the effect which this and other occurrences of like nature had in
bringing about the final event of our history, that we take the trouble
to narrate matters so trifling and uninteresting; for it appeared that