The Birkenhead News and Wirral General Advertiser. — 1895-09-25 (Birkenhead, Merseyside, England)

NRELD CHAPTER XXXV. utua's worms. Doctor raiding secured one of the nbleet lawyers in the country as Nitin's counsel. Ifo carefully collected all the evidence for iind against her. He weighed it carefully, and Um result ilid not plasm him. "The CYO looks very unfavourable to iny client," lie additted frankly to the doctor. "I can see but one chance for her acquittal in the awful array of damning evidence against her." " And that chance?" " Is the chance of proving an alibi to the hour of the murder," answered Mr. Davenport, the lawyer, gravely and decidedly. "I fear that it will be impossible to do that," Doctor Fielding answered with • heavy sigh, and from that moment hope began to fail in kW. breast. You told me that you saved her from attempted sulfide that night. Surely yon must have some Idea of the time when it occurred," said Mr...lsavenport. "It must have Issenauear midnight, although I cannot tell exattly. Mat ; remember that every person on the iyasht had retired boors before and left ippon the deck with my eatery cigar." "Yon met that, Captain 'Travers assisted you in the sessne if • the young lady that night. Might hessaireaminbertthe exact hour at which the ettollepted-suicide occurred" "Captain 'Travers is dead," replied the doctor,tdespondently. "Dead I" exclaimed the lawyer, with a start. "Tea, he awl very suddenly of apoplexy in a few days after the tragedy at Selwyn Heights." " And the young lady liereelf—hns she no knowledge of the hour at which she left her home?" the lawyer anxiously inquired. "I do not believe that' she has, but it would perhaps be better to ask her," Doctor Fielding replied. So they went to see Nina in her prison cell. Up to that moment Mr. Davenport had had a private opinion that his client was guilty. Everything looked so black against her, the evidence was so conclusive there scarcely seemed room for doubt. It all seemed to have come about so naturally, her jealousy of the dead woman, her passionate anger and open resentment seemed to have led up en inevitably to the cilia)* of murder that Mr. Davenport had decided in his mind that his client had scarcely the shadow of a case. But all this was before be had seen Nina Stmngemore. After they went to the prison, after lie beheld the lovely, hapless creature whose life.' as it were, seemed hanging on his halals, a groat revulsion of feeling came over the lawyer. He said to himself that although ho might never be able to prove her innocence in a court of law, that the angels in heaven were not more pure and guiltless than this martyred girl. And yet she could throw no light on the subject which involved so much to her. No. I cannot remember," she said, hopelessly when he entreated her to try to recall Om hour when she had left her home. "It might have been midnight, or it might have ii cii earlier. I do not know how long I sat there dated and wretched after Mrs. St. Alban's ct net words to me. I was too -miserable to note the lapse of time. When I had decided despairingly in my mind that I would drown myself, I rose, wrote *brief note which I left for my husband, mechanically donned some dark clothing, and went away. It was Tate late, I sopposo. I heard and saw no one, and the lights were all out in the house." "Try to think now,' he urged. "Did yea Dot look at your watch before leaving? Most persons do so mechanically before going out." • "I did not," she replied. He did not tall her how hopeless all this made her ease appear. He did not have the heart to do so. The beautiful. anguished young face had touched him beyond words. He vowed to himself that he would do all that lie could to help her, but he did not believe that he could do much. Bab although be did nob tell her in what; deadly peril she stood, Nina knew more than' he quseaed. Kitty's anxious words to her that night she returned had disclosed to her her danger. When they had left her alone in her, gloomy cell, she sank upon her knees with a passionate cry wrung from the depths of her, crushed and despairing young heart. "Talbot, my husband, coma to me? I need you!" With a passionate yearning beyond all telling,' Nina longed for her husband now. Her heart turned to into instinctively, feeling that his place was by her side in this hour of her terrible trial. "Even although he did not love me lie would not willingly let me perish like this," she thought, and it seemed to her that Talbot if Ise had been there could have done more for her than anyone else. It seemed to her that be bad more power than any other man. But lie was far away from her, the husband whom she bad loved so dearly for five long years, for whom ale had waited so patiently, and whose coming at last had brought her such terrible woe. Lite a mocking echo the words of her old song rose in her memory: " If lie woold come, to-day, to-day, to-day, rill, what a day to-day would be But now he's away, miles and miles away From me soros+ the oda. "Ch, little bird, flying, flying, flying, To your nest in the warm west, Tell him us you pass that I am dying, As you fly home to your neat." A bitter shame and dread were npon the. girl as she shrinkingly contemplated the cloes of her trial. She had not been afraid to die at her own hands, Imo the horror, the disgrace of liar impending doom shook her soul to ha centre. "To die on the scnffold—oh. I cannot befit ill How can they do it when I am innocent!" she wept, over and over, and it seemed to het that she would die of terror and shame even before the day appointed for her trial -- a day that wassindelinitely postponed because it was so difficult to find a jury. This case had been discussed months before by the public, and it was a horrible fact that scarcely a man could be found who had not already expressed his opinion upon it, an °pillion almost always adverse to the unhappy prisoner. So while the law tarried, gathering together its terrible weapons of prosecution. Nina languished in prison, and by some mysterious physical , force the yearning cry of her soul made itself audible to Talbot far across the sea. "Talbot, my husband, come to me, I malt you I"