“I thought I had run him through. It was providential that I did not. Ritchie is a brave man. I shall not recover. You will be candid with me, Doctor? It is all right.” These were some of the sentences caught up by young and old, and repeated with tearful pride in the dying hero. That was what they called him; and when on Friday morning the flag on the capitol hung at half-mast, the mourners who went about the streets were his fellow-townsmen, who had no word of condemnation for him and the rash act that ended his career. On Saturday morning it began to snow. By Sunday afternoon the streets were eighteen inches deep on the level, with the heaviest snow-fall of the season. Mrs. Pleasants, the widow of a governor of Virginia, and the mother of the slain editor, was a member of the Grace Street Presbyterian Church, of which Reverend Doctor Stiles was then pastor. The funeral services were held there on Sunday, at 3 o’clock P.M. By two the sidewalks were blocked by a crowd of silent spectators, and, half an hour later, every seat in the church, except those reserved for the family and immediate friends of the deceased, was filled. After these had taken their places, there was not standing-room in aisles or galleries. The sermon was an eloquent tribute to the private virtues and the public services of the deceased. One memorable extract is inscribed upon the monument erected by admirers and friends over his grave in Shockoe Hill Cemetery: With a Genius above talent, a Courage above Heroism None ever forgot the scene who saw the long line of funeral carriages winding, like a black stream, through streets where the snow came up to the axles, under the low-hanging sky that stooped heavily and gloomed into leaden gray by the time the cortége reached the cemetery. And all the afternoon the brooding air throbbed with the tolling bells. We said and believed that Richmond had never known so sad a day since she went into mourning for the threescore victims of the burning of the theatre in 1811. The trial of Thomas Ritchie for murder in the first, and of the seconds as “principals in the second degree,” followed the duel with swiftness amazing to the reader of criminal cases in our age. On March 31, 1846, four of the ablest lawyers in Virginia appeared in court to defend the prisoner. The old brochure which records the proceedings is curious and deeply interesting reading; in nothing more remarkable than in the defence of what was admitted to be “an unhappy custom” and directly opposed to the laws of the country. “_The letter of the law is made to yield to the spirit of the times_” is an italicized sentence in the principal speech of the defence. The same speaker dwelt long and earnestly upon precedents that palliated, excused, and warranted the time-honored (although “unhappy”) practice. Not less than fifteen instances of the supremacy of the higher law of the “spirit of the times” were drawn from English history.