These were some of the old friends and neighbors of the accused lady, who warmly bore witness to the generosity and nobility of her nature, which placed her in their estimation so far above the possibility of committing a crime so heinous.
Then came the white servants of her household, who described the situation of Rosa Blondelle's rooms on the first floor of Black Hall; the easy entrance into them from the grounds below, and the insecure spring fastenings of the windows, which might be opened from without by a thin knife passed under the latch and lifted.
All felt how small the amount of material was, out of which even the most learned and eloquent advocate could make a defence for Sybil Berners.
The examination of the witnesses for the defence closed.
Mr. Sheridan then made his last effort for his client, and was followed by Mr. Worth, both of whom exerted their utmost faculties in the hopeless cause of their unhappy client.
But ah! no eloquence of theirs, of any one's, could do away with the damning evidence against the accused lady.
The State's attorney, in a final address to the jury, pointed out this fact, and then sat down.
The venerable Judge Joseph Ruthven arose to sum up the evidence and charge the jury. We know that he believed in the innocence of the pure and noble young lady, whom he had known from her earliest infancy. Such a belief under such circumstances must have swayed the judgement and affected the action of the justest judge under the sun.
Judge Ruthven palpably leaned to the side of the prisoner. After summing up the evidence for the prosecution rather briefly and coldly, he urged upon the jury the value of a good name in the case of an accused party; the excellent name of the accused lady; the unreliability of circumstantial evidence; the fallibility even of the testimony of the dying, when such testimony was given in the excitement of terror and the agony of death; of how such testimony, however sincerely given and believed in, had often been utterly disproved by subsequent events; and finally, that if a single doubt, however slight, remained in their minds of the guilt of the prisoner, it was their bounden duty to give her the benefit of that doubt by a full acquittal. And so, praying Divine Providence to direct their counsels, he dismissed them to deliberate on their verdict.
The jury left the room in charge of a sheriff's officer.