Could the gentlemen of the jury be surprised at
the appalling discovery so recently made, as if great crimes in high
places were impossible or new things under the sun? He did not fail to
draw a touching picture of the victim, the beautiful, young
stranger-girl, whom they all remembered and loved--who had come, an
angel of mercy, on a mission of mercy, to their shores. Was not her
beauty, her genius, her goodness--by which all there had at some time
been blessed--sufficient to save her from the knife of the assassin? No!
as he should shortly prove. Yet all these years her innocent blood had
cried to Heaven in vain; her fate was unavenged, her _manes_ unappeased.
All the women, and all the simple-hearted and unworldly among the men,
were melted into tears, very unpropitious to the fate of Thurston; tears
not called up by the eloquence of the prosecuting attorney, so much as
by the mere allusion to the fate of Marian, once so beloved, and still
so fresh in the memories of all.
Thurston heard all this--not in the second-hand style with which I have
summed it up--but in the first vital freshness, when it was spoken with
a logic, force, and fire that carried conviction to many a mind.
Thurston looked upon the judge--his face was stern and grave.
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