prisoner is innocent, and that presumption must continue, until her guilt is satisfactorily proved.  This is the legal right of the prisoner; contingent on no peculiar circumstances of any particular case, but is the common right of every person accused of a crime.  The law surrounds the prisoner with a coat of mail, that only irrefragable proofs of guilt can pierce, and the law declares her innocent, unless the proof you have heard on her trial satisfies you, beyond a reasonable doubt, that she is guilty.  What constitutes reasonable doubt, it becomes your duty to earnestly and carefully consider.  It is charged that the defendant, on the night of the twenty-sixth of October, did wilfully, deliberately, and premeditatedly murder Robert Luke Darrington, by striking him with a brass andiron.  The legal definition of murder is the unlawful killing of another, with malice aforethought; and is divided into two degrees.  Any murder committed knowingly, intentionally and wantonly, and without just cause or excuse, is murder in the first degree; and this is the offence charged against the prisoner at the bar.  If you believe from the evidence, that the defendant, Beryl Brentano, did at the time and place named, wilfully and premeditatedly kill Robert Luke Darrington, then it will become your duty to find the defendant guilty of murder; if you do not so believe, then it will be your duty to acquit her.  A copy of the legal definition of homicide, embracing murder in the first and second degrees, and of manslaughter in the first and second degrees, will be furnished for your instruction; and it is your right and privilege after a careful examination of all the evidence, to convict of a lesser crime than that charged in the indictment, provided all the evidence in this case, should so convince your minds, to the exclusion of a reasonable doubt.

“In your deliberations you will constantly bear in memory, the following long established rules provided for the guidance of jurors: 

“’I.—­The burden of proof rests upon the prosecution, and does not shift or change to the defendant in any phase or stage of the case.

“’II.—­Before the jury can convict the accused, they must be satisfied from the evidence that she is guilty of the offence charged in the indictment, beyond a reasonable doubt.  It is not sufficient that they should believe her guilt only probable.  No degree of probability merely, will authorize a conviction; but the evidence must be of such character and tendency as to produce a moral certainty of the prisoner’s guilt, to the exclusion of reasonable doubt.

“’III.—­Each fact which is necessary in the chain of circumstances to establish the guilt of the accused, must be distinctly proved by competent legal evidence, and if the jury have reasonable doubt as to any material fact, necessary to be proved in order to support the hypothesis of the prisoner’s guilt, to the exclusion of every other reasonable hypothesis, they must find her not guilty.