Well may her spirit shrink.
’Tis hard in youth to yield our breath;
To die in thought is double death,
Shivering on fate’s cold brink.—Nicholas Michell.
Mr. Fenton arose for the defence. He was much too wise to weaken his cause by attempting to deny that which was undeniable. He therefore resolved to waive the first, and to concentrate his forces upon the overthrow of the second and vital point in the prosecution.
He commenced by saying that he would admit the fact that the Leaton family had perished by poison, but would totally deny that this poison had been administered by his client.
“Let the jury,” he said, “look upon Eudora Leaton, where she sits, overwhelmed with her weight of woe! Observe how young, how delicate, how sensitive she is. Can any one for an instant suppose that she, a young girl of sixteen springs, a mere child in years, an infant still in law, could have conceived, planned and executed so atrocious a crime as the destruction of a whole family to clear the way for her own inheritance of their estates! Such a supposition would be preposterous.
“It can only be because, for the deep atrocity of this crime, the law demands an instant victim, and no other is to be found, that this poor child has been seized and offered here as a sacrifice to appease the offended majesty of justice. And if in the end she is immolated, it will be only as the pascal lamb, slain upon the altar of the temple for the sins of others!
“I will not,” he continued, “affect to disregard the meshes of coincidence that envelop my most innocent client.
“Like the poor lost dove, beaten down by the storm, and fallen into the net of the fowler, she is involved in a coil of circumstances that may prove to be her destruction, unless the just interpretation of an intelligent jury intervene to save her from unmerited martyrdom.