Dunscomb saw that his honour was offended, and much in earnest. He was offended himself, and half disposed to throw up his brief; but he felt for the situation of a lovely and defenceless woman. Then his doubts touching his client’s sanity began to take the character of certainty; and he saw how odious it would be to abandon one so afflicted in her emergency. He hinted his suspicion to the court; but was told that the fact, under all the circumstances of the case, was one properly for the jury. After reflection, the advocate determined not to desert his trust.
We pass over the preliminary proceedings. A jury was empannelled with very little difficulty; not a challenge having been made. It was composed, in part, of those who had been in the box on the late occasion; and, in part, of new men. There was an air of earnestness and business about them all, that Timms did not like; but it was too late to raise objections. To own the truth, the senior counsel cared much less than before for the result; feeling satisfied that his contemplated application at Albany would meet with consideration. It is true, Mary Monson was no anti-renter. She could not come forward with her demand for mercy with hands dyed in the blood of an officer of that public which lives under the deception of fancying it rules the land; murderers who added to their crimes the hateful and pestilent fraud of attempting to cloak robbery in the garb of righteous liberty; nor could she come sustained by numbers around the ballot-box, and bully the executive into acts which the reason and conscience of every honest man condemn; but Dunscomb believed that she might come with the plea of a being visited by the power of her Creator, in constituting her as she was, a woman not morally accountable for her acts.
All the leading facts, as shown on the former trial, were shown on this. When the country practitioners were called on to give their opinions concerning the effect of the blow, they necessarily became subject to the cross-examination of the counsel for the prisoner, who did not spare them.
“Were you examined, sir, in the late trial of Mary Monson, for the murder of Peter Goodwin?” demanded Dunscomb of the first of these modern Galens who was put on the stand.
“I was, sir.”
“What did you say on that occasion”—looking at his notes of the other trial, “touching the sex of the persons to whom those skeletons were thought to have belonged?”
“I said I believed—not knew, but believed, they were the remains of Peter and Dorothy Goodwin.”
“Did you not use stronger language than that?”
“Not that I remember—I may have done so; but I do not remember it.”
“Did you not say you had ‘no doubt’ that those were the remains of Peter and Dorothy Goodwin?”