ghteen had been
for many years extremely fond of the young man, Fairbanks, and that her
love was ardently reciprocated. Jason Fairbanks had not been allowed,
however, to visit the girl at the home of her father, though the Fales
place was only a little more than a mile from his own dwelling, the
venerable Fairbanks house. None the less, they had been in the habit of
meeting frequently, in company with others, en route to the weekly
singing school, the husking bees and the choir practice. Both the young
people were extremely fond of music, and this mutual interest seems to
have been one of the several ties which bound them together.

In spite, therefore, of the stern decree that young Fairbanks should not
visit Miss Fales at her home, there was considerable well-improved
opportunity for intercourse, and, as was afterward shown, the two often
had long walks together, apart from the others of their acquaintance.
One of their appointments was made for the day of the murder, May 18,
1801. Fairbanks was to meet his sweetheart, he told a friend, in the
pasture near her home, and it was his intention at that time to persuade
her to run away with him and be married. Unfortunately for Fairbanks's
case at the trial, it was shown that he told this same friend that if
Elizabeth Fales would not run away with him he would do her harm. And
one other thing which militated against the acquittal of the accused
youth was the fact that, as an inducement to the girl to elope with him,
Fairbanks showed her a forged paper, upon which she appeared to have
declared legally her intention to marry him.

One tragic element of the whole affair was the fact that Fairbanks had
no definite work and no assured means of support. Young people of good
family did not marry a hundred years ago without thinking, and thinking
to some purpose, of what cares and expense the future might bring them.
The man, if he was an honourable man, expected always to have a home for
his wife, and since Fairbanks was an invalid, "debilitated in his right
arm," as the phrasing of the time put it, and had never been able to do
his part of the farm work, he had lived what his stern forebears would
have called an idle life, and consequently utterly lacked the means to
marry. That he was something of a spoiled child also developed at the
trial, which from the first went against the young man because of the
testimony of the chums to whom he had confided his intention to do
Elizabe