We have already given all that is known of the circumstances except certain details which Jean claimed in his confession, and certain acts and utterances which were testified to by local witnesses. We may now examine these testimonies, reserving his confession for a later discussion. So far as the crime itself is concerned but little testimony was brought forward; so little, in fact, that without the boy's confession he probably could never have been convicted of the deed. On the evening of the tragedy Jean was seen by several people walking up the street toward his home in company with his victim. Two days before this he had been heard to ask her when she was coming to see his father about his returning to school; to this she had replied, that she "did not know"; and he had answered, "Aw, I don't believe you intend to come at all, you will wait until summer time, and go home and then it will be too late." On the following evening he again asked her to go up to his house. She said she could not go then, as she was going to prayer meeting, but she would go the next night. He had also inquired of certain persons whether she went to the Post Office in the evening. On one occasion he had been seen with an old rusty wrench in his pocket and when asked what he was doing with it, he had replied, "I have use for it." This was the wrench with which he struck his victim the death-blow, according to his confession. Previous to the tragedy he had told certain persons that he meant to get even with Miss Beecher. The wrongs for which he claimed to have desired revenge had occurred more than a year before the tragedy. For over a year he had been out of school and had been working a part of that time. For some months he had been an inmate of St. Vincent's School, to which institution he was committed by a Justice of the Peace at the instigation of his father because of his propensity to jump freight trains. The evidence was strongly against the idea that Miss Beecher had ever done anything to injure him or anything which would reasonably cause resentment in his mind. He had not gotten along well in his studies after going into her room, had been more or less disorderly, and she, at the suggestion of the principal, had seated him facing the wall with his back to the rest of the school. She had occasionally sent him up to the principal, who had sometimes flogged him.