"The assassin coolly scanned his sleeping prey"—with an illustration of Winters peering in the window at White asleep on the divan; that:
"The foul deed was perpetrated while the unconscious victim slept"—with illustration; that:
"The prisoner stood mute under the fearful accusation"—with illustration; that:
It would be the first execution by the new sheriff, etc.
The maxim of the law—"that each man shall be deemed innocent till proved guilty"—was entirely disregarded by these tribunes of the people. Like bloodhounds on the trail, they gave tongue to notes that incited all men to the chase, including those who were to sit as judges without prejudice on the life of the quarry: they assumed Winters guilty till proved innocent and the possibility of such a contingency they did not even suggest.
I finally pushed the papers away from me in angry protest and spent the remainder of the day in vain effort to forget the subject.
Early Monday morning I hurried to the office eager to resume my work on the case.
I found awaiting me there a member of a law firm who gave me the not very welcome news that White had made me the sole executor of his will, a copy of which he handed me. I made an appointment with him to submit it for probate, and he left me to its perusal.
A few minutes sufficed for this, as it was simple and brief. After the usual clause, providing for payment of his debts, etc., he left all the rest of his property unconditionally to his cousin, Henry Winters, and then followed the unusual explanation that he did so, "as a late and imperfect reparation of a wrong."
In reflecting over this statement, I recalled that it had occurred to me on several occasions when White seemed worried and anxious to make a confidant of me that he was possibly remorseful over the injustice he fancied had been done Winters by the unequal division of his father's property, but for such striking evidence of the feeling as this expression evinced, I was not prepared.