er. A successful lawyer he was, in so far as he had
attained his present position, but no farther. He had never been
admitted within the exclusive circles of Black Hall, or shared its
hospitalities. And if this exclusion did not make him the enemy of the
lady of that manor, it certainly did not embarrass him with any of those
old associations of friendship and intimacy, such as might have
distressed him, had he been, like nearly all the other members of the
Blackville bar, the frequent guest of her father and her husband.

Thus the State's Attorney could deal with the lady of Black Hall, as he
would deal with any other person on trial at that court.

He opened the indictment, and gave the theory of the crime. Here was no
complication, he said, and no uncertainty. The case was so clear, that
it need occupy the court but a little time. He then, in a grand,
eloquent, and highly colored style, described the murder. He drew a
moving-picture of the lovely young victim, whose fair image many who
were present, he said, would recall with tears of pity; he described her
accepting the invitation of the jealous mistress of Black Hall, and
drawn within its dread doors, as a bird is enticed into the trap which
is to be its destruction. He showed her on that fatal Hallow Eve
reposing in her chamber, sleeping the sleep of innocence in fancied
security. He painted, in lurid colors, the form of the murderess
stealing down the stairs that led to her victim's room, "in the dead
waste and middle of the night," creeping to the innocent sleeper's
bedside, and plunging the fatal dagger in her peaceful, unsuspicious
bosom. He described the startled look and cry of the victim, shocked
from calm repose by a violent and bloody death; the scene of confusion,
horror, and terror that ensued; the dying words of Rosa Blondelle,
charging Sybil Berners with her death. He adverted to the guilty flight
of the murderess and the desperate means she and her friends had taken
even to the immolating of other lives, to secure her escape; until at
length, unable to hold out against the authorities any longer, she had
surrendered at discretion, and made a merit of giving herself up to
justice. All this, he concluded, he should undertake to prove to the
gentlemen of the jury.

He then proceeded to call the witnesses for the prosecution. The first
witness called to the stand was--Sybil's best friend, Captain Clement
Pendleton of Pendleton Park.

He came forward