he truth.

CHAPTER II. THE MURDERESS ASKS QUESTIONS.

The first of the events which I must now relate was the conviction of
The Prisoner for the murder of her husband.

They had lived together in matrimony for little more than two years. The
husband, a gentleman by birth and education, had mortally offended his
relations in marrying a woman of an inferior rank of life. He was
fast declining into a state of poverty, through his own reckless
extravagance, at the time when he met with his death at his wife's hand.

Without attempting to excuse him, he deserved, to my mind, some tribute
of regret. It is not to be denied that he was profligate in his
habits and violent in his temper. But it is equally true that he was
affectionate in the domestic circle, and, when moved by wisely applied
remonstrance, sincerely penitent for sins committed under temptation
that overpowered him. If his wife had killed him in a fit of jealous
rage--under provocation, be it remembered, which the witnesses
proved--she might have been convicted of manslaughter, and might have
received a light sentence. But the evidence so undeniably revealed
deliberate and merciless premeditation, that the only defense attempted
by her counsel was madness, and the only alternative left to a righteous
jury was a verdict which condemned the woman to death. Those mischievous
members of the community, whose topsy-turvy sympathies feel for the
living criminal and forget the dead victim, attempted to save her by
means of high-flown petitions and contemptible correspondence in the
newspapers. But the Judge held firm; and the Home Secretary held firm.
They were entirely right; and the public were scandalously wrong.

Our Chaplain endeavored to offer the consolations of religion to the
condemned wretch. She refused to accept his ministrations in language
which filled him with grief and horror.

On the evening before the execution, the reverend gentleman laid on my
table his own written report of a conversation which had passed between
the Prisoner and himself.

"I see some hope, sir," he said, "of inclining the heart of this woman
to religious belief, before it is too late. Will you read my report, and
say if you agree with me?"

I read it, of course. It was called "A Memorandum," and was thus
written:

"At his last interview with the Prisoner, the Chaplain asked her if she
had ever entered a place of public worship. She replied that she had
occasionally att