"You don't think that he went out with any deliberate idea of killing
your stepfather?"

"No, sir; I am sure he only went out to walk about till he got over his
passion, just as he had done before."

"It was his way, was it, when anything put him out very much, to go and
walk about till he got cool again?"

"Yes, sir."

For the defense Mr. Simmonds was called, and produced the threatening
letters which Mr. Mulready had laid before him. He stated that that
gentleman was much alarmed, and had asked that a military force should
be called into the town, and that he himself and his colleague had
considered the danger so serious that they had applied for and obtained
military protection.

Luke Marner and several of the hands at the mill testified to the
extreme unpopularity of their employer among his men, and said that they
should never have been surprised any morning at hearing that he had been
killed.

Dr. Green and Mr. Porson testified very strongly in favor of Ned's
character. This was all the evidence produced. Mr. Grant then addressed
the jury, urging that beyond the fact of this unfortunate quarrel, in
which the deceased appeared to have been entirely to blame and to have
behaved with extreme brutality, there was nothing whatever to associate
the prisoner with the crime. The young gentleman before them, as they
had heard from the testimony of gentlemen of the highest respectability,
bore an excellent character. That he had faults in temper he admitted,
such faults being the result of the lad having been brought up among
Indian servants; but Dr. Green and Mr. Porson had both told them that
he had made the greatest efforts to master his temper, and that they
believed that no ordinary provocation could arouse him. But after all
what did what they had heard amount to? simply this, the lad's mother
had been married a second time to a man who bore the outward reputation
of being a pleasant, jovial man, a leading character among his townsmen,
a popular fellow in the circle in which he moved.

It had been proved, however, by the evidence of those who knew him best,
of his workpeople, his servants, of this poor lad whom the prosecution
had placed in the box as a witness against his brother, that this man's
life was a long lie; that, smiling and pleasant as he appeared, he was
a tyrant, a petty despot in his family, a hard master to his hands, a
cruel master in his house, What wonder that between this lad and such
a s