“They may not see me here,” he would reply, after which she would turn away, her dull face full of patient suffering.

One item of news she brought him that gave him a moment’s cheer.

“Kalman,” she said, one day, “will speak nothing but Russian.”

“Ha!” he exclaimed.  “He is my son indeed.  But,” he added gloomily, “of what use now?”

Others sought admission,—­visitors from the Jail Mission, philanthropic ladies, a priest from St. Boniface, a Methodist minister,—­but all were alike denied.  Simon Ketzel he sent for, and with him held long converse, with the result that he was able to secure for his defence the services of O’Hara, the leading criminal lawyer of Western Canada.  There appeared to be no lack of money, and all that money could do was done.

The case began to excite considerable interest, not only in the city, but throughout the whole country.  Public opinion was strongly against the prisoner.  Never in the history of the new country had a crime been committed of such horrible and bloodthirsty deliberation.  It is true that this opinion was based largely upon Rosenblatt’s deposition, taken by Sergeant Cameron and Dr. Wright when he was supposed to be in extremis, and upon various newspaper interviews with him that appeared from time to time.  The Morning News in a trenchant leader pointed out the danger to which Western Canada was exposed from the presence of these semibarbarous peoples from Central and Southern Europe, and expressed the hope that the authorities would deal with the present case in such a manner as would give a severe but necessary lesson to the lawless among our foreign population.

There was, indeed, from the first, no hope of acquittal.  Staunton, who was acting for the Crown, was convinced that the prisoner would receive the maximum sentence allowed by law.  And even O’Hara acknowledged privately to his solicitor that the best he could hope for was a life sentence.  “And, by gad! he ought to get it!  It is the most damnable case of bloody murder that I have come across in all my practice!” But this was before Mr. O’Hara had interviewed Mrs. Fitzpatrick.

In his hunt for evidence Mr. O’Hara had come upon his fellow countrywoman in the foreign colony.  At first from sheer delight in her rich brogue and her shrewd native wit, and afterward from the conviction that her testimony might be turned to good account on behalf of his client, Mr. O’Hara diligently cultivated Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s acquaintance.  It helped their mutual admiration and their friendship not a little to discover their common devotion to “the cause o’ the paythriot in dear owld Ireland,” and their mutual interest in the prisoner Kalmar, as a fellow “paythriot.”