llow creature; what could legal skill accomplish? The affair
produced great and continued excitement; the murdered man had been
exceedingly popular, and the sympathies of the citizens were enlisted in
behalf of his family. Although clearly a case of manslaughter only, to the
astonishment of the counsel on both sides, the cry of "blood for blood,"
went out from that crowded court-room, and in defiance of precedent, Mr.
Aubrey was unjustly sentenced to be hanged. When the verdict was known,
Russell placed his insensible mother on a couch from which it seemed
probable she would never rise. But there is an astonishing amount of
endurance in even a feeble woman's frame, and after a time she went about
her house once more, doing her duty to her child and learning to "suffer
and grow strong." Fate had ordained, however, that Russell's father should
not die upon the gallows; and soon after the verdict was pronounced, when
all Mrs. Aubrey's efforts to procure a pardon had proved unavailing, the
proud and desperate man, in the solitude of his cell, with no eye but
Jehovah's to witness the awful deed, took his own life with the aid of a
lancet. Such was the legacy of shame which Russell inherited; was it any
marvel that at sixteen that boy had lived ages of sorrow? Mrs. Aubrey found
her husband's financial affairs so involved that she relinquished the hope
of retaining the little she possessed, and retired to a small cottage on
the outskirts of the town, where she endeavoured to support herself and the
two dependent on her by taking in sewing. Electra Grey was the orphan child
of Mr. Aubrey's only sister, who, dying in poverty, bequeathed the infant
to her brother. He had loved her as well as his own Russell, and his wife,
who cradled her in her arms and taught her to walk by clinging to her
finger, would almost as soon have parted with her son as the little
Electra. For five years the widow had toiled by midnight lamps to feed
these two; now oppressed nature rebelled, the long over-taxed eyes refused
to perform their office; filmy cataracts stole over them, veiling their
sadness and their unshed tears--blindness was creeping on. At his father's
death Russell was forced to quit school, and with some difficulty he
succeeded in obtaining a situation in a large dry-goods store, where his
labours were onerous in the extreme, and his wages a mere pittance. Though
Russell's employer, Mr. Watson, shrank from committing a gross wrong, and
pr