The ways of the hour

by James Fenimore Cooper

“What key did you use? Keep nothing back.”

“One of my own. My keys unlocked many of aunt Dolly’s drawers. She knew it, and never found any fault with it. Why should she? Her keys unlocked mine!”

“Another word—where is that stocking, and where are its contents?”

“Both are safe in the third drawer of my own bureau, and here is the key,” taking one from her bosom. “I put them there for security, as no one opens that drawer but myself.”

Timms took the key from the unresisting hand of the woman, and followed by Williams, Davis, and one or two more, he left the court-house. At that instant, Sarah Burton fainted. In the confusion of removing her into another room, Mary Monson resumed her seat.

“Mr. District Attorney, it can hardly be your intention to press this indictment any further?” observed the judge, wiping his eyes, and much delighted with the unexpected termination of the affair.

The functionary addressed was glad enough to be rid of his unwelcome office, and at once signified his willingness to enter a nolle prosequi, by an application to the bench, in the case of the arson, and to submit to an acquittal in that now being traversed. After a brief charge from the judge, the jury gave a verdict of acquittal, without leaving the box; and just as this was done, Timms and his companions returned, bringing with them the much-talked-of stocking.

It required months completely to elucidate the whole affair; but so much is already known, and this part of our subject being virtually disposed of, we may as well make a short summary of the facts, as they were already in proof, or as they have since come to light.

The fire was accidental, as has been recently ascertained by circumstances it is unnecessary to relate. Goodwin had left his wife, the night before the accident, and she had taken the German woman to sleep with her. As the garret-floor above this pair was consumed, the plough fell, its share inflicting the blow which stunned them, if it did not inflict even a greater injury. That part of the house was first consumed, and the skeletons were found, as has been related, side by side. In the confusion of the scene, Sarah Burton had little difficulty in opening the drawer, and removing the stocking. She fancied herself unseen; but Mary Monson observed the movement, though she had then no idea what was abstracted. The unfortunate delinquent maintains that her intention, at the time, was good; or, that her sole object was to secure the gold; but, is obliged to confess that the possession of the treasure gradually excited her cupidity, until she began to hope that this hoard might eventually become her own. The guilty soonest suspect guilt. As to “the pure, all things are pure,” so it is with the innocent, who are the least inclined to suspect others of wicked actions. Thus was it with Mrs. Burton. In the commission of a great wrong herself, she had little difficulty in supposing that Mary Monson was the sort of person that rumour made her out to be. She saw no great harm, then, in giving a shove to the descending culprit. When looking into the stocking, she had seen, and put in her own pocket, the notched piece, as a curiosity, there being nothing more unusual in the guilty thus incurring unnecessary risks, than there is in the moth’s temerity in fluttering around the candle. When the purse of Mary Monson was examined, as usually happens on such occasions, we had almost said as always happens, in the management of cases that are subsequently to form a part of the justice of the land, much less attention was paid to the care of that purse than ought to have been bestowed on it. Profiting by the neglect, Sarah Burton exchanged the notched coin for the perfect piece, unobserved, as she again fancied; but once more the watchful eye of Mary Monson was on her. The first time the woman was observed by the last, it was accidentally; but suspicion once aroused, it was natural enough to keep a look-out on the suspected party. The act was seen, and at the moment that the accused thought happy, the circumstance was brought to bear on the trial. Sarah Burton maintains that, at first, her sole intention was to exchange the imperfect for the perfect coin; and that she was induced to swear to the piece subsequently produced, as that found on Mary Monson’s person, as a literal fact, ignorant of what might be its consequences. Though the devil doubtless leads us on, step by step, deeper and deeper, into crime and sin, it is probable that, in this particular, the guilty woman applied a flattering unction to her conscience, that the truth would have destroyed.

Great was the wonder, and numberless were the paragraphs that this unexpected issue of the “great Biberry murders” produced. As respects the last, anything that will fill a column is a god-send, and the falsehood has even a value that is not to be found in the truth, as its contradiction will help along quite as much as the original statements. If the public could only be brought to see what a different thing publicity becomes in the hands of those who turn it to profit, from what it is thought to be, by those who fancy it is merely a mode of circulating facts, a great step towards a much-needed reformation would be taken, by confining the last within their natural limits.