Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1895-07-12
Continued from Yesterday
CHAPTER III.

In my case suppose that something
did, for got up and wrote a Letter tc
Mrs. Prineveau in which told her that
| accepted the case and would do the
best could for the accused, and that
it looked like a hopeless affair. In re-
Spouse to this l received a note of brief
thanks, inclosing a crisp five hundred
dollar bill as retaining fee. That the
pale face of the mans wife had deter
mined me is not unlikely, for it came
back to me in the night with the
strangest persistency and the same I'M
warranted look of trust in the gray
eyes.
The trial was set down to come on
about the first of May, and there
was about q months time to get ready
for it. l wasted about week in tho
conviction that all could do was to
dispute the evidence inch by inch, and
in the last resort show that Garrison
was given to emotional alterations
and was at times irresponsible. But
whenever my mind reverted to the
matter that miserable woman's face
rose UP with an awful reproach in it,
and then l fell to eXcusing myself to
myself as if l had not done right.
One morning, with an entirely mex
plicable impulse, l went down to the
place in Varick street. l found Mrs.
GARRISON living in one room on the
third floor of a dismally dirty barracks,
with two extraordinarily beautiful
children, scantily but tidily dressed,
playing about the floor, and occasion
ally asking when papa would come
back. She had taken in some kind of
needle worl1-button work, which she
showed me. She had to cover the iron
frames of the buttons with silk, and
arrange them on a card, for which she
got twenty-five cents dozen, and by
the utmost industry could never quite
make two cards a day of a dozen but
tons each. Her finger ends were black
with needle marks. She looked weary
and sick, but she did not complain.
Nothing that ever 1 had encountered in
my experience as a lawyer or
as man SO moved my SYM
pathy as this woman. Instructive
ly / knew rthat she had been
gently bred; that she had loved worth
less man and this was her penalty for
continuing to love him. l knew that
she would cling to him through all mis-
fortune and be the last to leave him
when his doom came. l felt myself
treating her with fine courtliness that
was inspired by respect, the respect we
always feel for something that is lit
tie above our human range.
1t was difficult to pull myself out of
this mood and come down to the practic
III business of lawyer, but it was
necessary.
Mrs. GARRISON" said, at is neces-
sary that we look at this matter in the
'lost cold-bloodcd way. We have got
20 make the effort to save your hus-
lland bcset on almost every side by al
,aest insuperable difficulties, and shut
into one or two miscrably narrow
courses. l have got to prove an alibi
or establish his insanity"
do you mean by insanity that you
will admit that he committed the deed
in a mad fit?'
Perhaps that would be the most
judicious course, and then throw our
selves on the sympathy of the jury and
the mercy of the court"
She shook her head with sad digni-
~. ale did not commit the deed" she
said.
Perhaps not. That may be moral
certainty with you. But a lawyer mus