day of September, and
a ripple of excitement pervaded the city. The interest attaching to
this case had extended beyond the locality in which it had occurred,
and the reporter's table was crowded with representatives of the
various metropolitan journals who designed giving publicity to the
proceedings of the trial.

The judges, solemn and dignified, were upon the bench. The lawyers,
bustling among their books and papers, were actively engaged in
preparing for the scenes that were to follow, while the State's
attorney, quiet and calm, but with a confident look of determination
upon his face, awaited the production of the prisoner and the formal
opening of the case.

Bucholz had engaged the services of three lawyers--General Smith, who
had acquired considerable fame as an attorney; Mr. Bollman, who had
been connected with the case from its inception, and Mr. Alfred E.
Austin, a young member of the bar, who resided at Norwalk.

The sheriff entered with his prisoner, and placed him in the dock, to
plead to the indictment that was to be read to him, and upon which he
was to be placed upon trial for his life.

He entered with the same careless, jaunty air which had marked his
first appearance at South Norwalk, and except for a certain
nervousness in his manner and a restless wandering of the eager
glance which he cast around him, no one would have imagined that he
stood upon the eve of a trying ordeal that was to result either in
sending him to the gallows or in striking from his wrists the
shackles that encircled them, and sending him out into the world a
free man.

He was dressed with scrupulous neatness, and had evidently taken
great care in preparing himself for the trial. He wore a new suit of
clothes, of neat pattern and of modern style, and his linen was of
spotless whiteness and carefully arranged. As he entered and took his
seat a suppressed murmur of surprise, not unmixed with sympathy,
pervaded the court-room.

The hall was crowded, and a large number of ladies, attracted,
perhaps, by that element of curiosity which is inherent in the sex,
and perhaps by that quality of sympathy for which they are
remarkable, were present, and Bucholz at once became the focus of all
eyes and the subject of universal comment and conversation.

From the nature of the charge against him many had expected to see
some ferocious-looking ruffian, whose countenance would portray the
evidence of his crime, and whose appearance wou