The trial proceeded. The fact that Mary Kingman had been grievously wronged, outraged, insulted, was made apparent. This was the terrible provocation of the prisoner. Mr. Darling made the most eloquent plea of his life. He pictured the condition of the deserted girl, who had believed she was a wife; the strong affection that existed between the prisoner and his sister. She had no friend, no protector, but this brother. Her father had absolutely driven her from his roof in his drunken frenzy. To whom could she look for justice but to this brother? He depicted her sick room, with Ross watching night and day by her side, loving and pitying her, and nursing his vengeance against her betrayer. He had gone to New York, plucked her from the poverty and disgrace to which she had been reduced by her unnatural protector. He had brought her home. He held in his fraternal arms the wreck of the beloved sister, wasted by disease, shattered by her mental suffering, disgraced, defiled, cast off. It was not right that the prisoner should slay the villain who had desolated the fond hopes of this loved one; but if ever man was justified in wielding the bolt of vengeance, Ross Kingman was. He reviewed the evidence, drawing from it every item which tended to show the sad condition of Mary, the strong provocation of Ross. Mr. Lowe followed with legal definitions, distinctions, and discriminations. He showed what murder was; what was English law, what was French law, what was American law. Having done enough to satisfy himself, and the bar, and the bench, that he was a sound lawyer, he contented himself with arguing very lucidly that a murder had been committed, and that the prisoner had committed it. As no one doubted this, not much was gained by his plea. In the matter of the provocation, Mr. Lowe was more useful to the jury. A sufficient provocation sometimes reduced the killing from murder to manslaughter; and this was the answer to the presumed malice which was the essential element in murder (1 Russ. Cr. 440); but the killing, except in self-defence, could not be absolutely justified by law, common or statute. He argued that if the prisoner was not guilty of murder, he was surely guilty of manslaughter. The jury could not avoid this conclusion. The presiding justice charged the jury. He defined murder, manslaughter, homicide, and pointed out the legal distinctions, so that the old farmers were as clear as noonday on the subject. He told them what malice was, what provocations were legally recognized. He convinced them that the court had a full and earnest conviction of the enormity of Buckstone’s offence; but society must be protected from the dagger of the assassin. He pointed out the exceeding great peril of justifying a man in taking the law into his own hands to resent real or fancied injuries.