"We are all ruined at D----!" he at length said; "Mrs. S----is in your jail, hard by, on a charge of murder." "Mrs. S----! of all the women in the world!" ejaculated the writer in unfeigned amazement: "murder of whom?" "Of a servant at D----," replied Mr. S----; "one of our own women." "And what could be the motive?" "The young woman," continued S----, "had been observed to be pregnant, and the report was got up that my son was the party responsible and blameable. Then the charge is, that my wife gave the girl poison, either to procure abortion, or to take away her life. The woman is dead and buried; but, I believe, her body has been taken up out of the grave and examined, and poison found in the stomach." "An ugly account," said the writer. "I mean not ugly as regards the evidence, of which, as yet, I have heard nothing. I could say beforehand that I don't believe the authorities will be able to bring home an act of this kind to so rational and respectable a woman, as I have known Mrs. S----to be; but if you wish me to get her off, you must allow me to look at the case as if she were guilty." "Guilty!" echoed the man, with a shudder. "Yes. Were I to go fumbling about in an affair of this kind, acting upon a notion--whatever I may think or feel--that Mrs. S----, though your wife, _could not_ possibly do an act of that kind, I would neither hound up, as I ought, the investigations of the prosecutor, nor get up proper evidence--not to meet their proofs only, but to overturn them." "I would have thought you would have been keener to get off an innocent person--a wife, and the mother of a family, too--than a guilty one," said S----. "We cannot get you people to understand these things," replied the writer; "but so it is, at least with me, and I rather think a good number of my brethren. We have a pride in getting off a guilty person; whereas we have only a spice of satisfaction in saving an innocent one. Perhaps I have an object, for your own sake, in speaking thus frankly to you; and I tell you at once, that if you intend to help me to get off your wife, you must, as soon as you can--even here, at this moment--renounce all blind confidence in her innocence." "Terrible condition!" said the farmer. "Not pleasant, but useful. How, in God's name, am I to know how to doctor, purge, or scarify, or anoint a testimony against you, unless I know that it exists, and where to find it?" "Very true," rejoined the farmer, trying to follow the clever "limb." "Don't hesitate. I will have more pleasure, and not, maybe, much less hope, in hearing you detail all the grounds of your suspicion against your wife, than in listening to your nasaling and canting about her innocence. All this is for your good, my dear sir, take it as you will." "I believe it," said the farmer, "and will try to act up to what you say; but I cannot, of my own knowledge, say much, as yet. These things are done privately, within the house, and a farmer is mostly out of doors."