The First Violin Part 79

"Do you ever take a receipt from your girls when you pay them?" I asked.

"Always," she answered.

"Can you send and get one of them for me?"

She said she would willingly go, if the court said so. The court did say so, and she went. Her dwelling was not far off, and she soon returned, and handed me four receipts, which I took and examined. They were all signed in a strange, straggling hand, by the witness.

"Now, Nancy Luther," said I, turning to the witness, "please tell the court, and the jury, and tell me, too, where you got the seventy-five dollars you sent in a letter to your sister in Somers?"

The witness started as though a volcano had burst at her feet. She turned pale as death, and every limb shook violently. I waited until the people could have an opportunity to see her emotion, and then I repeated the question.

"I--never--sent--any," she fairly gasped.

"You did!" I thundered, for I was excited now.

"I--I--didn't," she faintly uttered, grasping the rail by her side for support.

"May it please your honor, and gentlemen of the jury," I said, as soon as I had looked the witness out of countenance, "I came here to defend a youth who had been arrested for helping to rob the mail, and in the course of my preliminary examinations, I had access to the letters which had been torn open and rifled of money. When I entered upon this case, and I heard the name of this witness p.r.o.nounced, I went out and got the letter which I now hold, for I remembered to have seen one bearing the signature of Nancy Luther. This letter was taken from the mail-bag, and it contained seventy-five dollars, and by looking at the post-mark, you will observe that it was mailed on the very next day after the hundred dollars were taken from Mrs. Naseby's drawer. I will read it to you, if you please."

The court nodded a.s.sent, and I read the following, which was without date, save that made by the post-master upon the outside. I give it here verbatim:

"SISTER DORCAS: I cend yu heer sevente fiv dolers, which i want yu to kepe for me till i c.u.m hum. I can't kepe it heer coz ime afrade it will git stole. don't speke wun word tu a livin sole bout this coz I don't want n.o.bodi tu kno i hav got enny mony. yu wont now wil yu. i am first rate heer, only that gude fur nuthin snipe of liz madwurth is heer yit--but i hop tu git red ov her now. yu no i rote yu bout her. give my luv to awl inquiren friends. this is from your sister til deth. NANCY LUTHER."

"Now, your honor," I said, as I handed him the letter, and also the receipts, "you will see that the letter is directed to 'Dorcas Luther, Somers, Montgomery County.' And you will also observe that one hand wrote that letter and signed those receipts. The jury will also observe.

And now I will only add: It is plain to see how the hundred dollars were disposed of. Seventy-five were put into that letter and sent off for safe-keeping, while the remaining twenty-five were placed in the prisoner's trunk for the purpose of covering the real criminal."

The case was given to the jury immediately following their examination of the letter. Without leaving their seats, they returned a verdict of--"Not Guilty."

The youth, who had first asked me to defend the prisoner, caught me by the hand, but he could not speak plainly. He simply looked at me through his tears for a moment, and then rushed to the fair prisoner. He seemed to forget where he was, for he flung his arms about her, and as she laid her head upon his bosom, she wept aloud.

I will not attempt to describe the scene that followed; but if Nancy Luther had not been immediately arrested for theft, she would have been obliged to seek the protection of the officers, or the excited people would surely have maimed her, if they had done no more. On the next morning, I received a note, very handsomely written, in which I was told that "the within" was but a slight token of the grat.i.tude due me for my effort in behalf of a poor, defenseless, but much loved, maiden. It was signed "Several Citizens," and contained one hundred dollars. Shortly afterward, the youth came to pay me all the money he could raise. I simply showed him the note I had received, and asked him if he would keep his hard earnings for his wife, when he got one. He owned that he intended to make Lizzie Madworth his wife very soon.

I will only add that on the following day I succeeded in clearing my next client from conviction of robbing the mail; and I will not deny that I made a considerable handle of the fortunate discovery of the letter which had saved an innocent girl, on the day before, in my appeal to the jury; and if I made them feel that the finger of Omnipotence was in the work, I did it because I sincerely believe my client was innocent of all crime; and I am sure they thought so too.