tionless
as a statue, scarcely daring to move or breathe; but when the
depositions went more and more against Owen, her respirations became
quick, short, and gaspish; and when the crier desired her to get up on
the table, it was with difficulty that she obeyed him. When seated,
she gazed timidly round on the crowd of counsellors and the judges, as
though to bespeak their sympathy; but then, not meeting a single glance
from which to glean even the shadow of hope, she covered her face with
her hands. A moment or two elapsed, and she grew more assured, and the
counsel for the Crown proceeded with the examination.

"Ellen Duncan, is not that your name?" was the first question.

"It is, Sir," she shrinkingly answered, without raising her eyes.

"Do you know the prisoner at the bar?"

"Do I know the pres'ner at the bar?" she reiterated; "do I know Owen
Duncan? Shure, isn't he my husband?"

"Do you recollect the night of the twenty-first of September?"

"I do, Sir."

"Can you swear to whether your husband was at home on that night or
not?"

Her voice faltered a little as she answered in the negative; and on the
presiding judge repeating the question, with the addition of, "Did he
return at all next day?" it seemed as if she first thought that her
answers might criminate him still farther, and clasping her I hands
convulsively together, and raising her face to the bench, while the
scalding tears chased each other down her sunken cheek, she passionately
exclaimed--

"Oh, for the love of heaven, don't ask me any thing that 'ill be worse
for him! Don't, counsellor jewel, don't! don't ask me to swear any thing
that 'ill do him harm; for I can't know what I'm sayin' now, as the
heart within me is growin' wake."

After a few cheering expressions from the bench, who evidently were
much moved by her simply energetic language and action, she was asked
whether she could tell the Court where her husband spent that and the
following nights; and with all the eagerness that an instantaneously
formed idea of serving him could give, she answered--

"Oh, yis! yis! my Lord, I can. He was in the mountains shootin' wid Phil
Doran's gun, an' he was sazed by some men, that made him stop wid thim,
an' take an oath not to revale who they wor, an' they thrated him badly;
so afther three days he made his escape, and come home to the cabin,
whin he was taken by the poliss."

"One word more, an' you may go down--What was done with that gun?