The venerable presiding judge was supposed to be unfriendly to the accused, and the State's Attorney was known to be personally, as well as officially, hostile to his interests. So strongly were the minds of the people prejudiced upon one side or the other that it was with much trouble that twelve men could be found who had not made up their opinions as to the prisoner's innocence or guilt. At length, however, a jury was empaneled, and the trial commenced. When the prisoner was placed at the bar, and asked the usual question, "Guilty or not guilty?" some of the old haughtiness curled the lip and flashed from the eye of Thurston Willcoxen, as though he disdained to answer a charge so base; and he replied in a low, scornful tone:
The opening charge of the State's Attorney had been carefully prepared. Mr. Thomson had never in his life had so important a case upon his hands, and he was resolved to make the most of it. His speech was well reasoned, logical, eloquent. To destroy in the minds of the jury every favorable impression left by the late blameless and beneficent life of Mr. Willcoxen, he did not fail to adduce, from olden history, and from later times, every signal instance of depravity, cloaked with hypocrisy, in high places; he enlarged upon wolves in sheeps' clothing--Satan in an angel's garb, and dolefully pointed out how many times the indignant question of--"Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing?"--had been answered by results in the affirmative. He raked up David's sin from the ashes of ages. Where was the scene of that crime, and who was its perpetrator--in the court of Israel, by the King of Israel--a man after God's own heart. Could the gentlemen of the jury be surprised at the appalling discovery so recently made, as if great crimes in high places were impossible or new things under the sun? He did not fail to draw a touching picture of the victim, the beautiful, young stranger-girl, whom they all remembered and loved--who had come, an angel of mercy, on a mission of mercy, to their shores. Was not her beauty, her genius, her goodness--by which all there had at some time been blessed--sufficient to save her from the knife of the assassin? No! as he should shortly prove. Yet all these years her innocent blood had cried to Heaven in vain; her fate was unavenged, her _manes_ unappeased.