A few days brought the intelligence that Mr. Howard had died intestate, and that consequently his daughter was now his sole heir. His untimely fate had frustrated his design of disinheriting his only child. But oh! at what a cost had Ellen purchased his fortune. Could wealth bring any joy to that almost heart-broken wife? Willingly would she have surrendered it to have been as they were the day before, poor but unsuspected. Not that for a moment she doubted her husband’s innocence—no! she felt that the bosom on which she had so often leaned could never have been that of a murderer—but she saw that the evidence, so circumstantially adduced against him, was almost unanswerable. Alas! the public sentiment sufficiently forewarned her of her husband’s fate. No one even whispered the possibility of his innocence. One universal cry of indignation attested the horror with which the crime, and he as its reputed author, were regarded. But how did Stanhope deport himself in these trying circumstances? From the first he had asserted his innocence, and accounted for the tracks leading to his house, by stating that he had met three men, whom he supplicated, in his agony, for aid,—and that one of them had hurriedly thrown him the purse which he brought home. Every one shook their heads at this story. Yet the general incredulity did not produce any show of weakness in Stanhope. His character seemed to rise in majesty as his fortunes grew darker, and he prepared himself to breast the storm with fortitude at least, if not with resignation. Yet the sight of his sweet wife, almost unnerved him at times; and his greatest consolation was in reflecting that, if he should perish ignominiously, she would not be left a penniless outcast. And oh! how bitterly, and with what scalding tears did that wife weep upon his bosom. Meantime, however, another examination of Stanhope’s case was to take place, preparatory to fully committing him for trial at the next oyer and terminer. It was at this stage of the transaction that I was called in as counsel for the accused. We had known each other in society, in our younger days, and nothing ever more startled me than the news of his arrest. I could not believe him guilty of such an appalling crime. And yet I had fearful doubts. Could it be, that, stung to madness by approaching starvation, and recognising the author of his miseries in Mr. Howard, he had yielded to a momentary hallucination, and become a murderer?