If extremes meet, and the march of human progress be along no asymtotic line, is the day very distant when we shall welcome the Renaissance of that wisdom which two thousand years ago held its august tribunal in the solemn hours of night, when darkness hid from the Judges everything save well-authenticated facts?  The supreme aim of civil and criminal law being the conservation of national and individual purity, to what shall we attribute the paradox presented in its administration, whereby its temples become lairs of libel, their moral atmosphere defiled by the monstrous vivisection of parental character by children, the slaughter of family reputation, the exhaustive analysis of every species of sin forbidden by the Decalogue, and floods of vulgar vituperation dreadful as the Apocalyptic vials?  Can this generation

     “—­in the foremost files of time—­”

afford to believe that a grim significance lurks in the desuetude of typical judicial ermine?

Traditions of ante bellum custom proclaimed that “good society” in the town of X—­, formerly considered the precincts of courts as unfit for ladies as the fetid air of morgues, or the surgical instruments on dissecting tables; but the vanguard of cosmopolitan freedom and progress had pitched tents in the old-fashioned place, and recruited rapidly from the ranks of the invaded; hence it came to pass, that on the second day of the murder trial, when the preliminaries of jury empanelling had been completed, and all were ready to launch the case, X—­announced its social emancipation from ancient canons of decorum, by the unwonted spectacle of benches crowded with “ladies”, whose silken garments were crushed against the coarser fabrics of proletariat.  Despite the piercing cold of a morning late in February, the mass of human furnaces had raised the temperature to a degree that encouraged the fluttering of fans, and necessitated the order that no additional spectators should be admitted.

Viewed through the leaden haze of fearful anticipation, the horror of the impending trial had seemed unendurable to the proud and sensitive girl, whom the Sheriff placed on a seat fronting the sea of curious faces, the battery of scrutinizing eyes turned on her from the jury-box.  Four months of dread had unnerved her, yet now when the cruel actuality seized her in its iron grasp, that superb strength which the inevitable lends to conscious innocence, so steeled and fortified her, that she felt lifted to some lonely height, where numbness eased her aching wounds.

Pallid and motionless, she sat like a statue, save for the slow strokes of her right hand upon the red gold of her mother’s ring; and the sound of a man’s voice reading a formula, seemed to echo from an immeasurable distance.  She had consented to, had deliberately accepted the worst possible fate, and realized the isolation of her lot; but for one thing she was not prepared, and its unexpectedness threatened to shiver her calmness.  Two women made their way toward her:  Dyce and Sister Serena.  The former sat down in the rear of the prisoner, the latter stood for a few seconds, and her thin delicate hand fell upon the girl’s shoulder.  At sight of the sweet, placid countenance below the floating white muslin veil, Beryl’s lips quivered into a sad smile; and as they shook hands she whispered: