The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-06-05
CHAPTER XVII.
ALL THIS STOO

CHAPTER XVII.
 ALL THIS STOOD.
 SHALL spare you the opening
 details of the trial. also much of
 preliminary testimony. Enough
 that at the close of the sixth day the outlook was a serious one for Ar thur Cumberland. The prosecution ap- peared to be making good its claims. The quiet and unexpectedly dignified way in which at the beginning the defendant had faced the whole antag- onistic courtroom with the simple plea of ''Not guilty was being slowly but surely forgotten in the accumulat- ed proofs of his discontented life under his sisters dominating influence. his desire for independence and a free use of the money held in trust for him by this sister under their fathers will. the quarrels which such a situation would naturally evoke between charac- ters cast in such different molds and actuated by such opposing tastes and principles, and the final continuation of the same at the dinner table when Adelaide forced him, as 1t were to sub- scribe to her prohibition of all further use of liquor in their house. Follow ing this evidence of motive came the still more damaging one of oppor- tunity. He was shown to have been in the clubhouse at or near the time of Adelaide's death. The matter of the bottles was gone into and the event in Cuthbert road. Then I was called to the stand and my testimony asked for.
 had prepared myself for the ordeal and faced it unflinchingly. That might keep intact the one point neces- sary to Carmeis safety I met my in- quisitors now. as before, with the ut most candor in all other respects. h. deed. in one particular I was even more exact in my details than at any previous examination. I acknowledged what I had hitherto concealed, that in my first entrance into the clubhouse had come upon a mans derby hat and coat hanging in the lower hall. and when questioned more minutely on the subject allowed it to appear that 1t was owing to the disappearance of these articles during my stay upstairs that I had been led into saying that some one had driven away from the Whispering Pines before the coming of the police.
 This, as you will see, was in open contradiction of my former statements that l had seen an unknown party thus attired driving away through the upper gateway just as I entered by the lower. But 1t was a contradiction which, while noted by MT. Moffat, Arthur's lawyer, failed to injure me with the jury and much less with the spectators. That I should prevaricate even to my own detriment at a pre- hminary examination only to tell the truth openly and like a man when in court and under the sanctity of an oath was, in the popular estimation, something to my credit. and Mir Moi fat, whose chief recommendation as counsel lay in his quick appreciation of the exigencies of the moment, did not press me too sharply on this point when he came to his cross examina- ton.
 But in other respects he drove me hard A effort was made by him first of ali to discredit me as a wit ness. Fly lack oa appreciation for Adelaide and my secret but absorbing love for Carmel were inexorably brought out: also the easy. happy-go- lucky tenor of my life and my dogged persistence in any course I thought consistent with my happiness. My character was we'll known Tn this town of my birth, and it would have been folly for me to attempt to gloss it over. I had not even the desire to do so. If my sins exacted penance I would pay it here and now and to the full. Only Carmel should not suffer l refused to admit that sine had given any evidences of returning my reck- less passion. My tongue would not speak the necessary words, and it was not made to. It was not her charac ter. but mine. which MT. Moffat was endeayoriag to assail.
 But though I was thus shown up for what 1 was, in a manner most public and undesirable, neither the rulings of the court nor the attitude of the jury betrayed any loss of con- fidence in me as a credible witness, and. seeing this. the willy lawyer shift cd his ground and confined himself to an endeavor to shake me on certain definite and important points concern ing my finding of the body. Then he branched off into @ less narrowing topic and cross examined me in re- gard to the ring. I had said that it was on her hand when I bade goodby to her in her own house and that it was not there when I came upon her dead. Had the fact made me curious to examine the hand? No. Then I could not tell whether the finger on which she wore it gave any evidence of this ring having been pulled off with violence? No. I could not swear that in my opinion it was? 1 could not