r go
ahead with her examination at once. Quickest said, soonest mended,
you know."

The prisoner and his counsel having taken their seats, the coroner
having involuntarily thrown his right leg into the old, easy position,
the jury having pricked up their ears, the reporters having cleared
spaces for their elbows, the young girl proceeded to give her testimony.
She was too nervous to make a clear, connected statement. Sometimes
terror, sometimes tears, would choke her voice; but the cheering words
and the smelling bottle of Mrs. Crull invariably "brought her round in
no time," in the words of that estimable lady.

Pet told the story of her return home on the fatal night, of her finding
Mr. Wilkeson and her father in angry conversation; of her retiring to
bed very much fatigued; of more conversation, growing angrier and
angrier, which she overheard; of her marvellous vision in the night; of
her waking next morning to find her vision true, and her father dead on
the floor. All these facts, with which the reader is already familiar,
the poor child made known to the jury in a fragmentary, roundabout way,
as they were elicited by questions from the coroner, the jury, and
occasionally the prisoner's counsel. The narrative of the vivid dream,
or vision, produced a startling effect on the coroner, who was a firm
believer in every species of supernaturalism winch is most at variance
with human experience and reason.

In his interrogatories to the witness, the coroner took the truth of the
vision for granted. When she testified to the blows which (in her
dream) she saw her father and the prisoner exchange, and the battered
appearance of Mr. Wilkeson's face, the coroner looked at the prisoner,
and was evidently disappointed to observe no traces of a bruise upon his
pale brow or cheeks, nor the lightest discoloration about his eyes. But
the absence of this corroboration did not, in the coroner's opinion,
throw the least discredit on the dream.

But the foreman of the jury, who had been listening with an affrighted
look to the marvellous story, and believing it, had his faith sadly
shaken by this discrepancy. Having been fireman ten years, and foreman
of a hose company six years, he knew by large experience how long it
took to tone down a black eye or reduce a puffed cheek. The foreman
looked at the smooth, clear face of the prisoner, smiled incredulously,
and shook his head at his associates.

Fayette Overtop here acted his pa