) he refers to the Diary in these terms, 'The Diary will hang him;
I won't have him hanged.' If he could have found his opportunity of
getting at it in time--or if the sheriff's officers had not been too
quick for him--there can be no reasonable doubt that Dexter would
have himself destroyed the Diary, foreseeing the consequences of its
production in court. So strongly does he appear to have felt these
considerations, that he even resisted the officers in the execution of
their duty. His agitation when he sent for Mr. Playmore to interfere
was witnessed by that gentleman, and (it may not be amiss to add) was
genuine agitation beyond dispute.

"Questions of the Second Group: relating to the Wife's Confession. First
Question: What prevented Dexter from destroying the letter, when he
first discovered it under the dead woman's pillow?

"Answer: The same motives which led him to resist the seizure of the
Diary, and to give his evidence in the prisoner's favor at the Trial,
induced him to preserve the letter until the verdict was known. Looking
back once more at his last words (as taken down by Mr. Benjamin), we may
infer that if the verdict had been Guilty, he would not have hesitated
to save the innocent husband by producing the wife's confession. There
are degrees in all wickedness. Dexter was wicked enough to suppress
the letter, which wounded his vanity by revealing him as an object for
loathing and contempt--but he was not wicked enough deliberately to let
an innocent man perish on the scaffold. He was capable of exposing the
rival whom he hated to the infamy and torture of a public accusation of
murder; but, in the event of an adverse verdict, he shrank before the
direr cruelty of letting him be hanged. Reflect, in this connection, on
what he must have suffered, villain as he was, when he first read the
wife's confession. He had calculated on undermining her affection for
her husband--and whither had his calculations led him? He had driven
the woman whom he loved to the last dreadful refuge of death by suicide!
Give these considerations their due weight; and you will understand that
some little redeeming virtue might show itself, as the result even of
_this_ man's remorse.

"Second Question: What motive influenced Miserrimus Dexter's conduct,
when Mrs. (Valeria) Macallan informed him that she proposed reopening
the inquiry into the poisoning at Gleninch?

"Answer: In all probability, Dexter's guilty fears suggested