eeping
automatically up and down the wall as if he were brushing something
from the stones. A groan escaped him, and he dropped on one knee. His
eyes turned helplessly towards Dupre, and he gasped out the words:

"My God!--you were right--after all."

Then he fell forward on his face, and the tragedy ended.

EDITORIAL NOTES.

MR. WARD'S STORY "THE SILENT WITNESS."

We published in our January number the first of a series of stories by
Herbert D. Ward, in which Mr. Ward will exhibit in dramatic form some
monstrous imperfections in the present modes of judicial procedure.
That there is great need of such a study is shown by the remarkable
effect produced by the story already published, "The Silent Witness."
In various parts of the country the press has taken particular notice
of the story and of the question with which it deals. A recent
number of "The Argus," Avoca, Pennsylvania, contained the following
editorial:

"JUSTICE, WHERE ART THOU?"

"'The Silent Witness,' a powerful story in McCLURE's MAGAZINE for
January, portrays in a graphic and thrilling manner the evil, which
in some cases amounts almost to a horror, of holding in confinement
witnesses in cases of capital crime who are unable to furnish bail.

"The story tells of a young and stalwart country lad who goes to
Boston in search of fortune, and on the night of his arrival, while
wandering about in quest of lodgings to suit his scanty purse, is the
unwilling witness of a murder.

"He is arrested and held in the city jail to await the trial of the
murderer.

"The news of his imprisonment reaches his widow mother up among the
New Hampshire hills. She knows nothing of the circumstances further
than the rumors brought to her by her country neighbors. She dies of a
broken heart, though never doubting the innocence of her noble-hearted
boy.

"The unfortunate young man learns of her death through his sweetheart,
who comes to the Boston prison to see him.

"His grief is beyond endurance, and he curses the law that forces such
suffering upon the innocent. He has brain fever, and when the case
is called several months after the incarceration, the sheriff, who is
asked to produce the only witness for the commonwealth, responds that
he died that morning.

"The murderer, a saloon-keeper and ward man, has been at liberty under
bail during the time that the innocent witness has been suffering the
untold agony experienced by one who comes with spotle