Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-11-10
words for this chapter, because they told
succinctly the case against the prisoner.

This woman, Your Honor and gentlemen
of the jury, grew up in Hoosac in the man
ner have briefly described, until her mar
riage with Henry Mercer. Whether that
wedlock was legal or no is not material. 1t
is certain that she believed it to be so during
the short time she lived with him IN New
York, and that upon leaving him she had
reason to know that he had outrageously de-
ceived and maitreated her. In that fact we
find motive of vengeance. The prosecu-
ton has not been able to learn that there
was any communication between them from
the moment of their parting until the final
tragedy. Alter lapse of about five years,
she boldly announced that she was going to
marry Albert Dawers-a man whose charac-
ter was as good as her former husbands had
been the reverse, and whom she loved with
a passion more than equal to the detestation
she had felt for the other. From being the
butt of drunken and brutal scoundrel, she
became the cherished and adored wife
of the best looking and best natured
man In the village, and for
some brief months tasted that supreme
happiness which is known only to those per-
sons whom the past have actually suffered.
Perhaps SO much content irritated the on
lockers, for only cold looks were cast upon
the lovers, while the malicious prophesied
that MERGERS return would cut short the
pairs felicity, even affecting not to consider
them man and wife at all so that by degrees
they became isolated from their neighbors,
and they decided to at once remove to the
farm which Dawers had leased for term of
years. They did so. There new home was
a lovely one, back in the mountains near
the Massachusetts boundary line. There
they dwelt as much alone as on a deserted
island. The woman defied her world, caring
nothing, but the man felt her position
keenly, and persuaded her that it was best
to migrate to the far West. To this she at
last very reluctantly consented.
Six months, then, after the ceremony that
the villagers declared no ceremony, Moa
Barrios sat one night by the fire in the al
most empty house from which she was to
depart on the morrow with the man who
represented all the sweetness and happiness
she had found in her life. She heard step
on the path, the latch lifted, and we may
surely pity the unhappy woman when,
springing through the dusk, she found her.
self claSped in the arms, not of Albert
Dawers, but of Henry Mercer. OR what
passed between them God alone was wit
ness, and God alone knows the truth, but
when the man she loved came in an hour
later, she was sitting by the hearth with no
sign OF excitement or anxiety about her.
She prepared the supper, ate with him, and
from that moment he never left her until
they rose early next morning TO be in time
for the train that was to take them west
ward. So much Dawers has said in his pre-
liminary testimony, most reluctantly given,
but still more reluctantly two damn
ing pieces of evidence against her
were drawn from him. He said
they had arranged with neighbor to take
over to the Hoosae station the furniture
they possessed, and had sent on their small
personal belongings the day before but
packed, and he had brought in a coil of
stout rope for binding them together. At
starting the rope was missing, but his wife
could not account for its disappearance
more than himself, and did not fuss about
it, as most women would have done under
the circumstances. At breakfast (this was
only dragged from him bit by bit) he no.
ticed that she ate very little, but furtively
collected food on one plate and set it aside
as if for an expected guest. He asked her
why she did this, and she said the neigh
bors would be all over the house the mo-
ment their backs were turned, and she
would crafty their curiosity as to what
they had for breakfast. He reminded her
that their landlord was away for few days,
and that no one would know the
secret place hitherto agreed upon where
they were to hide the key of the
house. She laughed strangely, and
said that, though you might lock people
out, you could not lock then in. Then they
collected their small effects, and without a
Godspeed from friend, or a kindly eye to
follow them on their path, passed from the
home in which they had been 20 happy, to
start for the one that had yet to be earned in
the uncertainty of the future. Perhaps the
man looked behind, but at some distance
from the house the prisoner did more-she
affected to have forgotten something, and
bidding him go forward, ran quickly back.
But he reluctantly admitted that she re-
turned empty-hsnded; that she was pale as
a corpse, with wild eyes; that she gasped Tor
breath, stammeFing and presenting every
appearance of a woman who has received
some terrible shock, though when he asked
her if she had met with some insult from
passing neighbor she shook her head, but