to a perusal of the bulky paper, aided as I read by the verbal
explanations and commentaries of Mr. Sharpe. Our conference lasted
several hours; and it was arranged that another should be held early the
next morning at Mr. Sharpe's office, at which Mr. Kingston would assist.

Dark, intricate, compassed with fearful mystery, was the case so suddenly
submitted to my guidance; and the few faint gleams of light derived from
the attorney's research, prescience, and sagacity, served but to render
dimly visible a still profounder and blacker abyss of crime than that
disclosed by the evidence for the crown. Young as I then was in the
profession, no marvel that I felt oppressed by the weight of the
responsibility cast upon me; or that, when wearied with thinking, and
dizzy with profitless conjecture, I threw myself into bed, perplexing
images and shapes of guilt and terror pursued me through my troubled
sleep! Happily the next day was not that of trial; for I awoke with a
throbbing pulse and burning brain, and should have been but poorly
prepared for a struggle involving the issues of life and death. Extremely
sensitive, as, under the circumstances, I must necessarily have been, to
the arduous nature of the grave duties so unexpectedly devolved upon me;
the following _resume_ of the chief incidents of the case, as confided to
me by Mr. Sharpe, will, I think, fully account to the reader for the
nervous irritability under which I for the moment, labored:--

Mr. Frederick Everett, the prisoner about to be arraigned before a jury
of his countrymen for the frightful crime of murder, had, with his
father, Captain Anthony Everett, resided for several years past at
Woodlands Manor-House, the seat of Mrs. Eleanor Fitzhugh, a rich, elderly
maiden lady, aunt to the first, and sister by marriage to the last-named
gentleman. A generous, pious, high-minded person Mrs. Fitzhugh was
represented to have been, but extremely sensitive withal on the score of
"family." The Fitzhughs of Yorkshire, she was wont to boast, "came in
with the Conqueror;" and any branch of the glorious tree then firmly
planted in the soil of England that degraded itself by an alliance with
wealth, beauty, or worth, dwelling without the pale of her narrow
prejudices, was inexorably cut off from her affections, and, as far as
she was able, from her memory. One--the principal of these offenders--had
been Mary Fitzhugh, her young, fair, gentle, and only sister. In utter
disdai