We beg to observe here, that we do not strictly confine ourselves to the statements made during the trial, inasmuch as we deem it necessary to mention circumstances to the reader, which the rules of legitimate evidence would render inadmissable in a court of justice.  We are not reporting the case, and consequently hold ourselves warranted in adding whatever may be necessary to making it perfectly clear, or in withholding circumstances that did not bear upon our narrative.  With this proviso, we now proceed to detail the denouement.

The first evidence against him, was that of our female friend, whom we have called the Widow Hanlon, but who, in fact, was no other than the Prophet’s wife, and sister to the man Magennis, whom he had murdered.  The Prophet’s real name, she stated, was M’Ivor, but why he changed it, she knew not.  He had been a man, in the early part of his life, of rather a kind and placid disposition, unless when highly provoked, and then his resentments were terrible.  He was all his life, however, the slave of a dark and ever-wakeful jealousy, that destroyed his peace, and rendered his life painful both to himself and others.  It happened that her brother, the murdered man, had prosecuted M’Ivor for taking forcible possession of a house, for which he, M’Ivor, received twelve months’ imprisonment.  It happened also about that time, that is, a little before the murder, that he had become jealous of her and a neighbor, who had paid his addresses to her before marriage.  M’Ivor, at this period, acted in the capacity of a plain Land Surveyor among the farmers and cottiers of the barony, and had much reputation for his exactness and accuracy.  While in prison, he vowed deadly vengeance against her brother, Magennis, and swore, that if ever she spoke to him, acknowledged him, or received him into her house during his life, she should never live another day under his roof.

In this state matters were, when her brother, having heard that her husband was in a distant part of the barony, surveying, or subdividing a farm, came to ask her to her sister’s wedding, and while in the house, the Prophet, most unexpectedly, was discovered, within a few perches of the door, on his return.  Terror, on her part, from a dread of his violence, and also an apprehension lest he and her brother should meet, and, perhaps, seriously injure each other, even to bloodshed, caused her to hurry the latter into another room, with instructions to get out of the window as quietly as possible, and to go home.  Unfortunately he did so, but had scarcely escaped, when a poor mendicant woman, coming in to ask alms, exclaimed—­“Take care, good people, that you have not been robbed—­I saw a man comin’ out of the windy, and runnin’ over toward Jemmy Campel’s house”—­Campel being the name of the young man of whom her husband was jealous.

M’Ivor, now furious, ran towards Campel’s, and meeting that person’s servant-maid at the door, asked “if her master was at home.”