.

"Gentlemen of the jury, to save you from the commission of a wrong even
more cruel, I come to-day to set before you clearly the facts, elicited
from witnesses which the honorable and able counsel for the prosecution
declined to cross-examine. An able expounder of the law of evidence has
warned us that: 'The force of circumstantial evidence being exclusive
in its nature, and the mere coincidence of the hypothesis with the
circumstances, being, in the abstract, insufficient, unless they
exclude every other supposition, it is essential to inquire, with the
most scrupulous attention, what other hypothesis there may be, agreeing
wholly or partially with the facts in evidence.'

"A man of very marked appearance was seen running toward the railroad,
on the night of the twenty-sixth, evidently goaded by some unusual
necessity to leave the neighborhood of X--before the arrival of the
passenger express. It is proved that he passed the station exactly at
the time the prisoner deposed she heard the voice, and the half of the
envelope that enclosed the missing will, was found at the spot where
the same person was seen, only a few moments later. Four days
afterward, this man entered a small station in Pennsylvania, paid for a
railroad ticket, with a coin identical in value and appearance with
those stolen from the tin box, and as if foreordained to publish the
steps he was striving to efface, accidentally left behind him the
trumpet-tongued fragment of envelope, that exactly fitted into the torn
strip dropped at the bridge. The most exhaustive and diligent search
shows that stranger was seen by no one else in X--; that he came as a
thief in the night, provided with chloroform to drug his intended
victim, and having been detected in the act of burglariously
abstracting the contents of the tin box, fought with, and killed the
venerable old man, whom he had robbed.

"Under cover of storm and darkness he escaped with his plunder, to some
point north of X--where doubtless he boarded (unperceived) the freight
train, and at some convenient point slipped into a wooded country, and
made his way to Pennsylvania. Why were valuable bonds untouched?
Because they might aid in betraying him. What conceivable interest had
he in the destruction of Gen'l Darrington's will? It is in evidence,
that the lamp was burning, and the contents of that envelope could have
possessed no value for a man ignorant of the provisions of the will;
and the supersc