e defense. To deny
the murder and tear down the web of circumstantial evidence as fast as
the State could weave it was another.

The Coburn case had become a notorious example of that peculiarly
American institution, the serial trial. The first instalment had ended
in a verdict of guilty. It had been old Coburn's task to hold up his
wife and his son in the collapse of their mad despair, while he managed
and financed the long, slow struggle with the upper courts till he wrung
from them an order for a new trial. This had ended, after weeks of
torment in the court-room and forty-eight hours of almost unbearable
suspense, in a disagreement of the jury. The third trial found the
prosecution more determined than ever, and acquainted with all the
methods of the defense. The only flaw was the loss of an important
witness, "the man across the hall," whom impatient time had carried off
to the place where subpoenas are not respected. His deposition and his
testimony at the previous trials were as lacking in vitality as himself.

And now once more old Coburn must carry everything upon his back, aching
like a world-weary Atlas who dares not shift his burden. But now he was
three years weaker, and he had no more money to squander. His house, his
acres, the cattle upon his hills, his blooded thoroughbreds, his
patriarchal stallions, his town lots, his bank-building, his bonds and
stocks, all were sold, pawned as collateral, or blanketed with
mortgages.

As he had comforted his wife when they had witnessed the bolt from the
blue, so now he sat facing her in her third ordeal. Only now she was not
on the home porch, but in the arena. He could not hold her hands. Now
she dared not close her eyes and cry; it was not the work of one
thunderbolt she had to see. Now, under the darting questions of the
court-examiner, she was like a frightened girl lost in the woods and
groping through a tempest, with lightning thrusts pursuing her on every
side, stitching the woods with fire like the needle in a sewing-machine
stabbing and stabbing at the dodging shuttle.

The old woman had gone down into the pit for her son. She had been led
through the bogs and the sewers of vice. Almost unspeakable, almost
unthinkable wickedness had been taught to her till she had become deeply
versed in the lore that saddens the eyes of the scarlet women of
Babylon. But still her love purified her, and almost sanctified the
strategy she practised, the lies she told, t