she, as well as Carl, was unable to understand any but the most familiar and colloquial English.  The case was speedily decided; the few facts presented to the jury appeared to have no necessary connection, and there was no known motive for the deed.  The jury unanimously acquitted Carl, and with his wife and boy he left the court-room.  The verdict was approved by the spectators, for no man in the neighborhood was more universally loved and respected than Carl Proch.

Having paid Jameson his fee for his services, Carl was about to depart, when the lawyer’s curiosity could be restrained no longer, and he called his client back to the private room of his office.

“Carl,” said he, “you look like a good fellow, above anything mean or wicked; but yet I don’t know what to make of you.  Now you are entirely through with this scrape; you are acquitted; and I want to know what is the meaning of it all.  I will keep it secret from all your neighbors.  Did you kill Stolzen, or not?”

“Well, if I did,” he answered, “can they do anything with me?”

“No,” said Jameson.

“Not if I acknowledge?”

“No, you have been acquitted by a jury; and by our law a man can never be tried twice for the same offence.  You are safe, even if you should go into court and confess the deed.”

“Well, then, I did kill him,—­and I would again!”

For the moment, a fierce light gleamed upon the calm and kindly face.  Then, feeling that his answer would give a false view of the case, without the previous history of the parties, Carl sat down and in his broken English told to his lawyer the story I have here attempted to record.  It was impossible to doubt a word of it; for the simplicity and pathos of the narrative were above all art.  Here was a simple case, which the boldest inventor of schemes to punish villany would have been afraid to use.  Its truth is the thing that most startles the mind accustomed to deal with fictions.

We leave Carl to return to his farm with his wife, for whom he had suffered so much, and with the hope that no further temptation may come to him in such a guise as almost to make murder a virtue.

THE TELEGRAPH.

  Thou lonely Bay of Trinity,
    Ye bosky shores untrod,
  Lean, breathless, to the white-lipped sea
    And hear the voice of God!

  From world to world His couriers fly,
    Thought-winged and shod with fire;
  The angel of His stormy sky
    Rides down the sunken wire.

  What saith the herald of the Lord?—­
    “The world’s long strife is done! 
  Close wedded by that mystic cord,
    Her continents are one.

  “And one in heart, as one in blood,
    Shall all her peoples be;
  The hands of human brotherhood
    Shall clasp beneath the sea.

  “Through Orient seas, o’er Afric’s plain,
    And Asian mountains borne,
  The vigor of the Northern brain
    Shall nerve the world outworn.