“I s’pose you read all about it at the time, but the papers always gave me the worst of it, and the evidence wa’n’t near so bad as it looked in the papers. Of course they proved about the boy goin’ out the next mornin’ to the neighbors, and cryin’ for his pa and ma, and about ever’one lookin’ all over for us without findin’ us nor any trace of either one, and about the horse and wagon both lookin’ as if it had been out all night. And then the folks as lived next door told about hearin’ me say ‘you damned bitch,’ and hearin’ someone fall, though they didn’t think much of it then as they’d heard so many rows before. And then they told about findin’ a piece of brown paper covered with blood, and then they brought in a doctor, or someone who said he’d examined it with a magnifyin’ glass and it was human blood. He wa’n’t quite sure whether it was a gentleman or a lady; but he knew ‘twas one or the other. Then they brought in the paper and handed it to the jury, and passed it down along both rows, and ever’one took it in his hand and felt it, and looked at it just as if they never had seen any paper like that before, and wanted to make sure ‘twas paper and not cloth. Of course the minute I seen it I knew it was the paper that had the beefsteak in it, and I told my lawyer what it was. An’ I got right up to say something and the judge looked at me just as cross and says ‘Set down and keep still; you’ve got a lawyer to talk for you, and if you say anything more, I’ll send you to jail.’ Of course I was scart to hear him speak to me that way before the jury and the whole room full of people, and I knew that it would show ever’one that the judge was against me. Some of the papers next day made out that I jumped up and was goin’ to run away when I seen the bloody paper. “My lawyer had another doctor examine a piece of the paper that night, and he said it was a cow or an ox, but he wouldn’t come and testify to it unless I’d give him a hundred dollars, but of course I didn’t have that. The court room was awful still when they passed around that paper; you could hear the jurors breathe and they held their heads down as if they felt sorry about somethin’. And after they’d looked it all over the lawyer took it, and the judge says: ‘Let me see that paper,’ and he put on his spectacles and looked it all over, first on one side and then on the other. He had a little bit of a magnifyin’ glass in one hand, and he put it over the paper and looked at it through the glass, and then he looked at me just as solemn as if it was a funeral, and I seen it was all up with me. Of course, I told my lawyer just where I got it and what it was, and he went down to the butcher shop and seen the man, but the man was ‘fraid to come, and said he didn’t remember ‘bout the steak nor about me; he guessed he’d seen me—I used to come down that way to peddle—but he couldn’t tell whether I was in the shop that night or not.