ty in the soul of an accused man is not the
only thing which has to be taken into consideration.

Was there ever a malefactor condemned to imprisonment or torment for
whom the heart of some woman or other did not plead in mitigation of his
sentence? Yet the man-made laws against which untutored hearts will now
and again protest are often essentially merciful in comparison with the
wild and hasty judgments that outrun the law--whether in mercy or in
severity.

It was so in Alan's case. The popular opinion was evidently against him.
The great majority thought this case of attempted wife-murder too clear
for argument, and too cold-blooded to warrant anything like sympathy for
the accused. Alan's private affairs had been made public property for
some time past, and he now suffered from a storm of hostility and
prejudice against which it was impossible to contend. His story, or the
world's story about him, had been current gossip for the last few
months, as the reader has already seen; and a large number of people
appeared to have fixed upon him as a type of the respectable and
hypocritical sinner, prosperous, refined, moving in good society and
enjoying a fair reputation, yet secretly hardened and corrupt. It was
not often that the underhand crimes of such men were plainly exposed to
view, and, when they were, an example ought to be made of the offender
as a warning to his class. Ever since Cora had gained a hearing in the
police-court at Hammersmith, Alan was set down as a heartless libertine,
who had grown tired of his wife, or, at any rate, as one who wanted to
wash his hands of her, and throw the burden of maintaining her upon the
rates. Thus it became quite a popular pastime to hound down "Poet
Walcott."

This is how the outcry originally began. One or two newspapers with an
ethical turn, which had borrowed from the pulpit a trick of improving
the sensational events of the day for the edification of their readers,
and which possessed a happy knack of writing about anything and anybody
without perpetrating a libel or incurring a charge of contempt of court,
had printed articles on "The Poet and the Pauper," "Divorce Superseded,"
and the like. Stirred up by these interesting homilies, a few shallow
men and women, with too much time on their hands, began to write inept
letters, some of which were printed; and then the editors, being accused
of running after sensations, pointed to their correspondents as evidence
of a p