“Never mind about the pistol.  What became of the handkerchief?”

“When I picked it up, an injun-rubber stopper rolled out, and as ther’ wan’t no value in a hank’cher, I saw no harm in keepin’ it—­ for a’mento of ole Marster’s death.”

“You knew it was a lady’s handkerchief.”

“No, sir!  I didn’t know it then; and what’s more, I don’t know it now.”

“Is not this the identical handkerchief you found?”

“Cant say.  ’Dentical is a ticklish trap for a pusson on oath.  It do look like it, to be shore; but two seed in a okrey pod is ezactly alike, and one is one, and t’other is t’other.”

“Look at it.  To the best of your knowledge and belief it is the identical handkerchief you found on Gen’l Darrington’s pillow?”

“What I found had red specks sewed in the border, and this seems jest like it; but I don’t sware to no dentical—­’cause I means to be kereful; and I will stand to the aidge of my oath; but—­Mars Alfred--don’t shove me over it.”

“Can’t you read?”

“No, sir; I never hankered after book-larnin’ tomfoolery, and other freedom frauds.”

“You know your A B C’s?”

“No more ’n a blind mule.”

As the solicitor took from the table in front of the jury box, the embroidered square of cambric, and held it up by two corners, every eye in the court-room fastened upon it; and a deadly faintness seized the prisoner, whitening lips that hitherto had kept their scarlet outlines.

“Gentlemen of the jury, if the murdered man could stand before you, for one instant only, his frozen finger would point to the fatal letters which destiny seems to have left as a bloody brand.  Here in indelible colors are wrought ’B.  B.’!—­Beryl Brentano.  Do you wonder, gentlemen, that when this overwhelming evidence of her guilt came into my possession, compassion for a beautiful woman was strangled by supreme horror, in the contemplation of the depravity of a female monster?  If these crimson letters were gaping wounds, could their bloody lips more solemnly accuse yonder blanched, shuddering, conscience-stricken woman of the sickening crime of murdering her aged, infirm grandfather, from whose veins she drew the red tide that now curdles at her heart?”

CHAPTER XVII.

As the third day of the trial wore away, the dense crowd in the court-room became acquainted with the sensation of having been unjustly defrauded of the customary public peruisite; because the monotonous proceedings were entirely devoid of the spirited verbal duels, the microscopic hair splitting, the biting sarcasms of opposing counsel, the brow-beating of witnesses, the tenacious wrangling over invisible legal points, which usually vary and spice the routine and stimulate the interest of curious spectators.  When a spiritless fox disdains to double, and stands waiting for the hounds, who have only to rend it, hunters feel cheated, and deem it no chase.