The unconscious senhor—with whom, during this part of the process, they had prevented the miserable woman holding any communication—was meantime busily prosecuting his affairs, whatever they were, amidst the gaieties of Washington. One night, upon his return from a public ball, he was arrested by an officer who had just reached his quarters with a criminal warrant, taken back to the scene of his ingratitude, and, together with the partner of his crime, put upon trial for the murder of his benefactor.
The guilt of both parties was established, I believe, beyond a doubt; but some legal loophole was found by which the woman was permitted to elude the capital punishment, and condemned to live. The ungrateful guest was sentenced to be hanged: shortly before the time of execution he made full confession of his having planned and instigated the poisoning of his unsuspecting host, and died the death of an assassin.
Here is a suite of horrors, plainly and briefly set down, sufficient to supply stuff for any murder-loving three-volume novelist; yet is there one other, and that not least, to be added; for it appeared in the progress of the trial, and time in the ordinary course confirmed this evidence, that the poor child, the daughter of the murderess, had fallen a victim to the lust of this devil, Mina.
The fate of the girl and her infant I could not rightly learn; all that was known, indeed, being her removal to some distant part of the continent. The mother, it was believed, yet resided within the walls her guilt has made for ever infamous.
The house is always pointed out to the passing stranger, and was, when I saw it, no unfit monument of its owner's crime, and the curse which so quickly followed on it. Its fences were thrown down, its outhouses in ruin, the paths about it overgrown with filthy weeds; and the latticed window-shutters, once gay as green paint could make them, now dirty and broken, were left to swing loose from every wall. Still, evidences of its being inhabited were exhibited about the yard, where a dog and a few fowls lay basking; and suspended from the branch of a blighted tree, standing near the fallen entrance-gate, hung an ill-inscribed sign, bearing the inscription "Temperance House" in large characters.
A singular change,—the abode of the grossest lust, and the scene of the foulest murder, perhaps, ever combined in the full catalogue of crime, changed into a temple to Temperance.
JOURNAL.
Sunday, December 1st.—A little cloudy, but mild and pleasant. We have up to this date no severe weather; and, indeed, with the exception of now and then a day not colder than some which we experienced in September, have had no remembrancer of the approach of frost: but I fancy old father Winter "'bides his time," and will not spare us when his icy wings are once loosed upon the north-east wind.