ial evidence, and about how it very nearly hung an
innocent man for a murder which he had no thought of committing.
It struck Joseph rather forcibly that this victim of circumstantial
evidence was as respectable and inoffensive a person as himself, and
probably had never any more thought of being in danger from the law.
Circumstances had set their trap for him while he was quite unconscious
of peril, and he only awoke to find himself in the toils. And from this
he went on to reflect upon the horrible but unquestionable fact that
every year a certain proportion, and perhaps a very considerable
proportion, of those who suffered the penalties of the law, and even
the death-penalty, are innocent men,--victims of false or mistaken
evidence. No man, however wise or virtuous, can be sure that he will not
be taken in this fearful conscription of victims to the blind deity of
justice. "None can tell," thought Joseph, with a shudder, "that the word
he is saying, the road he is turning, the appointment he is making, or
whatever other innocent act he is now engaged in, may not prove the
last mesh in some self-woven death-net, the closing link in some damning
chain of evidence whose devilish subtlety shall half convince him that
he must be guilty as it wholly convinces others."

Timidity is generally associated with imaginativeness, if not its
result, and Joseph, although he concealed the fact pretty well under
the mask of reticence, was constitutionally very timid. He had an
unprofitable habit of taking every incident of possible embarrassment
or danger that occurred to his mind as the suggestion for imaginary
situations of inconvenience or peril, which he would then work out,
fancying how he would feel and what he would do, with the utmost
elaboration, and often with really more nervous excitement than he would
be likely to experience if the events supposed should really occur.
So now, and all the more because he was a little out of sorts, the
suggestions of this story began to take the form in his mind of an
imaginary case of circumstantial evidence of which he was the victim.
His fancy worked up the details of a fictitious case against himself,
which he, although perfectly innocent, could meet with nothing more than
his bare denial.

He imagined the first beginnings of suspicion; he saw it filming the
eyes of his acquaintances, then of his friends, and at last sicklying
over the face even of his brother Silas. In fancy he made