Mrs Peixada. Harland Henry

to school with the prisoner. If their accounts were to be believed, she was a “flirt,” and a “doubleface.” At length, Mrs. George Washington Shapiro took the stand.

      “Mrs. Shapiro, were you acquainted with Mr. Bernard Peixada, the decedent?”

      “Well acquainted with him—an old friend of his family.”

      “And with his wife, the prisoner?

      “I made her acquaintance shortly before Mr. Peixada married her. After that I saw her as often as once a week.”

      “Will you please give us your estimate of her character?”

      “Bad, very bad. She is false, she is treacherous, but above all, she is spiteful and ill-humored.”

      “For example?”

      “Oh, I could give twenty examples.”

      “Give one, please.”

      “Well, one day I called upon her and found her in tears. ’My dear,’ said I, ’what are you crying about?’ ’Oh,’ she answered, ’I wish Bernard Peixada’—she always spoke of her husband as Bernard Peixada—‘I wish Bernard Peixada was dead.’ ’What!’ I remonstrated. ’You wish your husband was dead? You ought not to say such a thing. What can you mean?’ ’I mean that I hate him,’ she replied. ’But if you hate him,’ said I, ’if you are unhappy with him, why don’t you wish that you yourself were dead, instead of wishing it of him?’ ’Oh,’ she explained, ’I am young. I have much to live for. He is an old, bad man. It would a good thing all around, if he were dead.’.rdquo;

      “Can you give us the date of this extraordinary conversation?”

      “It was some time, I think, in last June; a little more than a month before she murdered him.”

      The efforts of the prisoner’s counsel to break down Mrs. Shapiro’s testimony were unavailing.

      “Mr. Short,” says the Gazette, “now summed up in his most effective style, dwelling at length upon the prisoner’s youth and previous good character, and arguing that she could never have committed the crime in question, except under the sway of an uncontrollable impulse induced by mental disease. He wept copiously, and succeeded in bringing tears to the eyes of several jurymen. He was followed by Assistant-district-attorney Sardick, for the People, who carefully analyzed the evidence, and showed that it placed the guilt of the accused beyond the reach of a reasonable doubt. Recorder Hewitt charged dead against the fair defendant, consuming an hour and a quarter. The jury thereupon retired; but at the expiration of seventeen minutes they returned to the court-room, and, much to the surprise of every one present, announced that they had agreed upon a verdict. The prisoner was directed to stand up. She was deathly pale; her teeth chattered; her hands clutched at the railing in front of the clerk’s desk. The formal questions were put in their due order and with becoming solemnity. A profound sensation was created among the spectators when the foreman pronounced the two decisive words, ’Not guilty.’ A vivid crimson suffused the prisoner’s throat and cheeks, but otherwise her appearance did not alter. Recorder Hewitt seemed for a moment to discredit his senses. Then, suddenly straightening up and scowling at the jury-box, ’You have rendered an outrageous verdict; a verdict grossly at variance with the evidence,’ he said. ’You are one and all excused from further service in this tribunal.’ Turning to Mrs. Peixada, ’As for you, madam,’ he continued, ’you have been unrighteously acquitted of as heinous a crime as ever woman was guilty of. Your defense was a sham and a perjury. The ends of justice have been defeated, because, forsooth, you have a pretty face. You can go free. But let me counsel you to beware, in the future, how you tamper with the lives of human beings, better and worthier in every respect than yourself. I had hoped that it would be my duty and my privilege to sentence you to a life of hard labor in the prison at Sing Sing, if not to expiation of your sin upon the gallows. Unfortunately for the public welfare, and much to my personal regret, I have no alternative but to commit you to the keeping of your own guilty conscience, trusting that in time you may, by its action, and by the just horror with which your fellow-beings will shun your touch, be chastised and chastened. You are discharged.’ Mrs. Peixada bowed to the court, and left the room on the arm of her counsel.”

      Undramatic and matter-of-fact though it was, Arthur got deeply absorbed in the perusal of this newspaper report of Mrs. Peixada’s trial. When the jury returned from their deliberations, it was with breathless interest that he learned the result; he had forgotten that he already knew it. As the words “Not guilty” took shape before him, he drew a genuine sigh of relief. Then, at once recollecting himself, “Bah!” he cried. “I was actually rejoicing at a miscarriage of justice. I am weak-minded.” By and by he added, “I wish, though, that I could get at the true inwardness of the matter—the secret motives that nobody but the murderess herself could reveal.” For the sake of local color, he put on his hat and went over to the General Sessions court-room—now empty and in charge of a single melancholy officer—and tried to reconstruct the scene, with the aid of his imagination. The recorder had sat there, on the bench; the jury there; the prisoner there, at the counsel table. The atmosphere of the court-room was depressing. The four walls, that had listened to so many tales of sin and unhappiness, seemed to exude a deadly miasma. This room was reserved for the trial of criminal causes. How many hearts had here stood still for suspense! How many wretched secrets had here been uncovered! How many mothers and wives had wept here! How many guilt-burdened souls had here seen their last ray of light go out, and the shadows of the prison settle over them! The very tick-tack of the clock opposite the door sounded strangely ominous. Looking around him, Arthur felt his own heart grow cold, as if it had been touched with ice.