Already they had proved that the gun was his, that he had been
heard not many days before the commission of the deed to threaten
the deceased; indeed, that the police had, at that time, been
obliged to interfere, to prevent some probable act of violence. It
only remained to bring forward a sufficient motive for the threat
and the murder. The clue to this had been furnished by the
policeman, who had overheard Jem's angry language to Mr. Carson; and
his report in the first instance had occasioned the sub-poena to
Mary.
And now she was to be called on to bear witness. The court was by
this time almost as full as it could hold; but fresh attempts were
being made to squeeze in at all the entrances, for many were anxious
to see and hear this part of the trial.
Old Mr. Carson felt an additional beat at his heart at the thought
of seeing the fatal Helen, the cause of all,--a kind of interest and
yet repugnance, for was not she beloved by the dead; nay, perhaps,
in her way, loving and mourning for the same being that he himself
was so bitterly grieving over? And yet he felt as if he abhorred
her and her rumoured loveliness, as if she were the curse against
him; and he grew jealous of the love with which she had inspired his
son, and would fain have deprived her of even her natural right of
sorrowing over her lover's untimely end: for you see it was a
fixed idea in the minds of all, that the handsome, bright, gay, rich
young gentleman must have been beloved in preference to the serious,
almost stern-looking smith, who had to toil for his daily bread.
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