Mrs. Churchill came over. “Where is mother, Lizzie?” She said: “I don’t know. She had a note to go to see some one who was sick, but I don’t know but she is killed, too, for I think I heard her come in.” I will talk about that by and by, if I don’t weary you too much. Then she said something to Fleet. Although she told Fleet that the last time she saw her stepmother was 9 o’clock, and she was then making her bed in the room where she was found dead, she said, “some one brought a letter or a note to Mrs. Borden,” and she thought she had gone out, and had not known of her return. Then when Bridget came back she wanted to find her. She knew that one of the mother’s only relatives was Mrs. Whitehead, the sister of her husband, as it turned out, because it turned out by Miss Emma’s cross-examination and she said: “Oh, Lizzie, if I knew where Mrs. Whitehead lived I would go and see if Mrs. Borden is there and tell her that Mr. Borden is very sick.” Mr. Foreman, charged with the responsibility of the solemn trust imposed upon him, my learned associate said in opening this case that that statement was a lie. Conscious as I am, Mr. Foreman, that any unjust or harsh word of mine might do injury that I never could recover my peace of conscience for, I reaffirm that serious charge. No note came; no note was written; nobody brought a note; nobody was sick. Mrs. Borden had not had a note. My learned friend said, “I would stake the case on the hatchet.” I will stake it on your belief or disbelief in the truth or falsity of that proposition. Afterwards, after Lizzie had told Bridget that Mrs. Borden had had a note to go out and see some one, that Mrs. Borden had gone out on a sick call and had had the note come that morning, she told her before she went to the room and that murder was discovered, and after it was a matter of common talk, and when Mrs. Churchill was asking Bridget not as a source of original information but for all the news there could be had about it, Bridget then said to her, not “to my own knowledge Mrs. Borden had a note to go out to see some one who was sick,” but repeated it as the story of the original and only author, Lizzie Borden. Obviously that is so, because when my learned and distinguished friend comes to the cross-examination of Bridget, this is what Bridget said, that she never had any knowledge of a note at all, except what Lizzie told her. Pardon me for reading it, because this is vital to the case. “You simply say that you didn’t see anybody come with a note?” “No, sir; I did not.” “Easy enough for anybody to come with a note to the house and you not know it, wasn’t it?” “Well, I don’t know if a note came to the back door that I wouldn’t know. The door bell never rang that morning at all.” “But they wouldn’t necessarily go to the back door, would they?” “No. I never heard anything about a note; whether they got it or not, I don’t know. I never heard anything about a note.” She was obviously telling the story as Lizzie had told it to her. Bridget had last seen Mrs. Borden dusting in the sitting room. She had been told by Lizzie that she had got a note and gone out.