e mysterious woman on whose
testimony everything hinged, had not only been found, but proved to be
the prisoner's own wife, who had been so active in his defense. This
announcement was stupefying enough to over-shadow all other news of the
day, and satisfied the most jaded palate for sensationalism.

The first question asked on all sides was: Why had not the wife come
forward before? The reason, as glibly explained by an evening journal of
somewhat yellow proclivities, was logical enough. The telling of her
midnight visit to a single man's rooms involved a shameful admission
which any woman might well hesitate to make unless forced to it as a
last extremity. Confronted, however, with the alternative of either
seeing her husband suffer for a crime of which he was innocent or making
public acknowledgment of her own frailty, she had chosen the latter
course. Naturally, it meant divorce from the banker's son, and
undoubtedly this was the solution most wished for by the family. The
whole unsavory affair conveyed a good lesson to reckless young men of
wealth to avoid entangling themselves in undesirable matrimonial
adventures. But it was no less certain, went on this journalistic
mentor, that this wife, unfaithful as she had proved herself to be, had
really rendered her husband a signal service in his present scrape. The
letter she had produced, written to her by Underwood the day before his
death, in which he stated his determination to kill himself, was, of
course, a complete vindication for the man awaiting trial. His
liberation now depended only on how quickly the ponderous machinery of
the law could take cognizance of this new and most important evidence.

The new turn of affairs was naturally most distasteful to the police. If
there was one thing more than another which angered Captain Clinton it
was to take the trouble to build up a case only to have it suddenly
demolished. He scoffed at the "suicide letter," safely committed to
Judge Brewster's custody, and openly branded it as a forgery concocted
by an immoral woman for the purpose of defeating the ends of justice. He
kept Annie a prisoner and defied the counsel for the defence to do their
worst. Judge Brewster, who loved the fray, accepted the challenge. He
acted promptly. He secured Annie's release on _habeas corpus_
proceedings and, his civil suit against the city having already begun in
the courts, he suddenly called Captain Clinton to the stand and gave him
a g