s charge, which amounted almost to a demonstration of guilt, and
concluded with a confession due to his oath and conscience, that he saw
not how the jury could do their duty to their Creator and their
fellow-creatures, but by returning _one_ verdict. They retired to
consider it; and, during a deathlike silence, all eyes were bent on a
deathlike Image.

It had appeared in evidence, that the murder had been committed, at
least all the gashes inflicted--for there were also finger-marks of
strangulation--with a bill-hook, such as foresters use in lopping trees;
and several witnesses swore that the bill-hook which was shown them,
stained with blood, and with hair sticking on the haft, belonged to
Ludovic Adamson. It was also given in evidence--though some doubts
rested on the nature of the precise words--that on that day, in the room
with the corpse, he had given a wild and incoherent denial to the
question then put to him in the din, "What he had done with the
bill-hook?" Nobody had seen it in his possession since the spring
before; but it had been found, after several weeks' search, in a hag in
the moss, in the direction that he would have most probably taken--had
he been the murderer--when flying from the spot to the loch where he was
seized. The shoes which he had on when taken, fitted the footmarks on
the ground, not far from the place of the murder, but not so perfectly
as another pair which were found in the house. But that other pair, it
was proved, belonged to the old man; and therefore the correspondence
between the footmarks and the prisoner's shoes, though not perfect, was
a circumstance of much suspicion. But a far stronger fact, in this part
of the evidence, was sworn to against the prisoner. Though there was no
blood on his shoes, when apprehended his legs were bare--though that
circumstance, strange as it may seem, had never been noticed till he was
on the way to prison! His stockings had been next day found lying on the
sward, near the shore of the loch, manifestly after having been washed,
and laid out to dry in the sun. At mention of this circumstance a cold
shudder ran through the court; but neither that, nor indeed any other
circumstance in the evidence--not even the account of the appearance
which the murdered body exhibited when found on the moor, or when
afterwards laid on the bed--extorted from the prisoner one groan--one
sigh--or touched the imperturbable deathliness of his countenance. It
was prove