The Child of Waterloo, or, The Horrors of the Battle-Field — page 281: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

278 THE CHILD OF WATERLOO. and it follows that it must have been committed by one of a certain number of persons, such a train of evidence as will fix i¢ upon one of this number, although what may be called circum- stantial, is quite admissible, Jt is proved by the prosecutor, and admitted by the defense, that the prisoner at the bar was at the Morton Arms on the evening of the murder, Witnesses like- wise, whose testimony I do not see any circumstances to induce us to cast a reasonable doubt upon, swear unhesitatingly to the identity of the prisoner at the bar with the man who must have committed the deed, unless we can jump to the extravagant conclusion that some individual, not the prisoner at the bar, must have taken great pains to surround himself with all the in- signia of guilt, yet in reality being guiltless. The story of the counsel for the defense is not corroborated, even in any of the minutest details, xand I cannot see how the calling forward a witness to prove that the prisoner, Sternholde, was connected with another in the perpetration of a serious, but yet a minor offense, in any way invalidates the testimony which makes him ilty of a more serious and a majorone. Gentlemen of the jury, shali leave the case in your hands, merelv saying, that if you have any rational doubt upon the guilt of the prisoner at the bar, that it will be your pleasure, as much as it will be your duty, to give him the fuli benefit of such doubt; but. at the same time, gentlemen of the jury, if you feel that the defense set up says more for the ingenuity of counsel than for the majesty of truth—if you feel that such a story as is told by the learned gen- tleman who has so ably conducted the defense is entirely and totally without the corroboration of evidence, and that it would have been quite possible for the learned gentleman to have con- cocted that story with the assistance of the prisoner at the bar —it will be necessary for you, unflinchingly, to return a verdict of guilty. Gentlemen of the jury, with these few observations, I leave the case entirely to your decision.” This was so strong a summing-up against the prisoner, that no one in the court could entertain any doubt as to the result. There was that look upon the judge’s face, too, when he had finished, which showed that he considered an awful duty would soon devolve upon him, and that he would be quickly obliged to “ae a fellow-creature to a painful and an ignominious eath. The jury looked as solemn and stupid as juries usually do, and the fattest man, who was, of course, elected foreman, shook his head as if there were really something in it.. They turned round in the box to consult, and during that brief period the agitation of Sternholde was most excessive. He clutched the front of the bar till his finger-nails cracked again, and a death-like pallor overspread his countenance. | Then the jury turned round and looked more solemn than be- fore, and the foreman having a great bald head, wiped it with a flaming yellow silk handkerchief, and looked very hard at the clerk of the arraigns, as he said: ‘‘Gentlemen of the jury, have you decided upon a verdict? Do you find the prisoner at the bar guilty or not guilty ?” comicbooks. com