crime,
they were reminded of all the details of the murder by the newspapers,
which for some days had been announcing the approaching trial. But they
had not forgotten. The sex, the age, the beauty of the prisoner; her
high social position in Washington, the unparalleled calmness with which
the crime was committed had all conspired to fix the event in the public
mind, although nearly three hundred and sixty-five subsequent murders had
occurred to vary the monotony of metropolitan life.

No, the public read from time to time of the lovely prisoner, languishing
in the city prison, the tortured victim of the law's delay; and as the
months went by it was natural that the horror of her crime should become
a little indistinct in memory, while the heroine of it should be invested
with a sort of sentimental interest. Perhaps her counsel had calculated
on this. Perhaps it was by their advice that Laura had interested
herself in the unfortunate criminals who shared her prison confinement,
and had done not a little to relieve, from her own purse, the necessities
of some of the poor creatures. That she had done this, the public read
in the journals of the day, and the simple announcement cast a softening
light upon her character.

The court room was crowded at an early hour, before the arrival of
judges, lawyers and prisoner. There is no enjoyment so keen to certain
minds as that of looking upon the slow torture of a human being on trial
for life, except it be an execution; there is no display of human
ingenuity, wit and power so fascinating as that made by trained lawyers
in the trial of an important case, nowhere else is exhibited such
subtlety, acumen, address, eloquence.

All the conditions of intense excitement meet in a murder trial. The
awful issue at stake gives significance to the lightest word or look.
How the quick eyes of the spectators rove from the stolid jury to the
keen lawyers, the impassive judge, the anxious prisoner. Nothing is
lost of the sharp wrangle of the counsel on points of law, the measured
decision's of the bench; the duels between the attorneys and the
witnesses. The crowd sways with the rise and fall of the shifting,
testimony, in sympathetic interest, and hangs upon the dicta of the
judge in breathless silence. It speedily takes sides for or against
the accused, and recognizes as quickly its favorites among the lawyers.
Nothing delights it more than the sharp retort of a witness and the