His Other Wife: A Novel — page 315: what you’re looking at

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

ARRAIGNED. 307 *“'These observations will be subject to the correction of a discerning judge, who will permit nothing to be placed in the scales of justice but what ought to be weighed there. “‘Gentlemen, the prisoner, Mr. Mathew Croft, is ac- cused of having verified the fable of the wolf who clothed himself in the spotless fleece of a sheep, and, entering a peaceful fold thus disguised, carried off, to be destroyed, one of its lambs. ‘In brief, Mr. Mathew Croft, in the guise of a holy preacher of the gospel of truth and righteousness, did take unto himself from the simple and honest congrega- tion to whom he preached at Bethel, the young woman, Rachel Logan, the orphan ward of one of the elders of that church. ‘‘This young, trustful creature, together with her for- tune of $60,000, in her own right, were by the prisoner duly and lawfully appropriated. Almost immediately thereafter Mr. Croft removes with his wife from her home and her friends, and, on the pretext of ill-health, goes to reside in a distant State in one of the Gulf cities. ‘Soon after his arrival in the new locality—where he ~ still professes, but does not follow, his priestly calling— his wife, Rachel; falls into a feeble state of health, for which her physicians can discern no reasonable cause in a woman of her robust and perfect organism. So alarming do her symptoms become, that their diagnosis finally points to softening of the brain, accompanied by a letting Eomicbooks: (E(e) 3