“Gentlemen, fain would I seize this theory were it credible, and setting thereon, as in an ark, this most unfortunate prisoner, float her safely through the deluge of ruin, anchor her in peaceful security upon some far-off Ararat; but it has gone to pieces in the hands of its architect.  Instead of rescuing the drowning, the wreck serves only to beat her down.  If we accept the hypothesis of a lover at all, it will furnish the one missing link in the terrible chain that clanks around the luckless prisoner.  The disappearance of the three hundred and twenty dollars has sorely perplexed the prosecution, and unexpectedly the defence offers us the one circumstance we lacked; the lover was lurking in the neighborhood, to learn the result of the visit, to escort her home; and to him the prisoner gave the missing gold, to him intrusted the destruction of the will.  If that man came to ‘Elm Bluff’ prepared to rob and murder, by whom was he incited and instigated; and who was the accessory, and therefore particeps criminis?  The prisoner’s handkerchief was the medium of chloroforming that venerable old man, and can there be a reasonable doubt that she aided in administering it?

“The prosecution could not explain why she came from the direction of the railroad bridge, which was far out of her way from ’Elm Bluff’; but the defence gives the most satisfactory solution:  she was there, dividing her blood-stained spoils with the equally guilty accomplice—­her lover.  The prosecution brings to the bar of retribution only one criminal; the defence not only fastens the guilt upon this unhappy woman, by supplying the missing links, but proves premeditation, by the person of an accomplice.  Four months have been spent in hunting some fact that would tend to exculpate the accused, but each circumstance dragged to light serves only to swell the dismal chorus, ‘Woe to the guilty’.  To-day she sits in the ashes of desolation, condemned by the unanimous evidence of every known fact connecred with this awful tragedy.  To oppose this black and frightful host of proofs, what does she offer us?  Simply her bare, solemnly reiterated denial of guilt.  We hold our breath, hoping against hope that she will give some explanation, some solution, that our pitying hearts are waiting so eagerly to hear; but dumb as the Sphinx, she awaits her doom.  You will weigh that bare denial in the scale with the evidence, and in this momentous duty recollect the cautious admonition that has been furnished to guide you:  ’Cosceding that asseverations of innocence are always deserving of consideration by the executive, what is there to invest them with a conclusive efficacy, in opposition to a chain of presumptive evidence, the force and weight of which falls short only of mathematical demonstration?’ The astute and eloquent counsel for defence, has cited some well-known cases, to shake your faith in the value of merely presumptive proof.