Olivia : $b or, It was for her sakeGarvice, Charles
General
Olivia : $b or, It was for her sake
Garvice, Charles
Dime novels; English fiction
“I have one piece of evidence more to produce, my lord. It is a letter
written by Mr. Bartley Bradstone. It is addressed to Mrs. Olivia
Bradstone, and is a distinct and clear confession that he was the
murderer of Bella Lee.”
“Read it,” said the judge.
Mr. Sewell read it slowly and solemnly, then handed it to the judge,
who passed it to the jury.
Mr. Sewell then motioned the policeman to the box.
“How did you obtain this letter?” he said.
“One piece of it from the hand of Mr. Bartley Bradstone,” he replied,
evidently with suppressed emotion; “the other was on the table just
beside him, sir, and near the burnt-out candle.”
Intense silence.
“Then Mr. Bartley Bradstone--where is he?” asked the judge.
“At his own house, The Maples, sir. When I went with the warrant
Mr. McAndrew had brought this morning from London, I met this young
woman--Miss Bessie. She’d got a letter from her mistress to give to Mr.
Bradstone, or to leave at the house if he was away. And she and me went
into the hall together. The servants said Mr. Bradstone was out--had
gone to London some days since. Then I told them that I’d information
that he’d been back. They all said they hadn’t seen him. But they owned
that he might be in the library, which they weren’t allowed to enter
lately. I went to the door and found it locked, my lord, and me and
the butler forced it. The room was quite dark, with the blinds down;
but when we’d pulled ’em up, we found Mr. Bartley Bradstone lying face
downward across the table with the half of the letter clutched in his
hands. He was quite dead and stiff. There wasn’t no mark nor speck upon
him, and the doctor as we fetched says that he died all in a minute of
heart disease.”
They let him go on with his tragic story uninterruptedly, and, when he
had finished, the judge said, solemnly, amid profound silence:
“Gentlemen, this case has been tried by a higher court than this. It
still remains for us to humbly put on record man’s verdict as made
plain by Him who sees all things and weighs all hearts. Do you find the
prisoner guilty, or not guilty?”
“Not guilty!” came the quick, sharp response.
A roar burst forth from the hot, parched throats of the excited crowd.
Two or three men standing near the dock made a rush for it; in an
instant they were followed by a hundred others, and before the police
could interfere, Faradeane was torn out of the box and carried through
the corridor and into the streets--a free man!
A scene of the wildest confusion followed. Men--ay, and women,
too--shouted and danced, as if they had suddenly gone mad. It was in
vain for the police to attempt to clear the streets, in which the crowd
seemed to grow thicker every moment. Amid the intense excitement,
the Grange carriage was seen to be making its way slowly through the
throng, and the mob instantly surrounded it, and cheered for the squire
and Olivia.
At last they set Faradeane down on the steps of the marketplace, and
permitted him to speak.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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