She was all in black, with no color about her except the beads and her luxuriant golden hair, which showed under her widow’s bonnet like a gleam of yellow sunshine as she was driven away from the home she was never to see again. The trial which came on quickly did not last long. There were not many witnesses, and few were needed, the case was so plain. Maria was on the stand until she lost her wits entirely, and what she said one minute she contradicted the next. Only one point of any importance was brought out by her evidence. Mrs. Dalton’s name was Christina, which her husband shortened into ’Tina, and Maria testified that on the night of the murder, after she heard a man’s voice speaking to Mrs. Dalton, she thought she heard, or dreamed that she did, some one call “’Tina, ’Tina,” in what she described “a gugglin’” voice, like one in distress or choking. Up to this point Mrs. Dalton had sat with her face unveiled, her youthful beauty enhanced by her widow’s weeds and her bright hair, telling upon the sympathy of the spectators. But when Maria repeated the name “’Tina,” as it must have been called that awful night by her dying husband, she covered her face with her hands and moaned, “Oh, Maria, in mercy stop before I go mad.” Then Maria broke down and was taken from the room for a time, nor could any amount of questioning afterwards wring from her a confession that she ever observed anything wrong between Mrs. Dalton and St. John. He liked her,—she liked him,—and they played and sang together a good deal when Mr. Dalton was home, and more, perhaps, when he wasn’t. There was, however, sufficient evidence to convict Mrs. Dalton without Maria’s. The papers referred to by the man called by Uncle Zacheus the “vally’s brother,” and whose real name was Davis,—a recent convict from state’s prison,—contained a promise from St. John to pay Davis and his comrade, Brown, another convict, one thousand dollars to get Mr. Dalton out of the way. Davis, who, in spite of his unprepossessing appearance, was the least hardened of the two men, confessed that several plans had been suggested and talked over and abandoned, until he was getting tired and would have given up but for the thousand dollars, five hundred of which Mrs. Dalton had agreed to pay. The visit to Ridgefield that night was an accident. The horse had been hired to go to an intermediate town. On reaching it Brown had suggested going to Ridgefield to see how the land lay, as he expressed it. On hearing from Mrs. Dalton that her husband was at the hotel, and that she was expecting him home when the storm was over, they decided that this was their opportunity, as no one knew they were in town, and, waiting in the darkness and rain, they accomplished their work. Taken as he was by surprise, Mr. Dalton uttered no cry as they grasped his throat, except the words “’Tina, ’Tina,” while the ’Tina called for gave no sign if she heard it.