that he drags his victim !-there that he finishes the slaughter! He covers that innocent daughter with disgrace! He disgraces, too, four other unhappy creatures-his children and his wife, and makes up his mind to live for the future, his brow self-branded with shame! Ah, sirs, nature never gave birth to the monster whom I have described. Monster do I say? I should say five! The father, the mother, the son, the two daughters, all except the wretched Cécile, are a set of savages, for all aided in the invention or the execution of the diabolical plot!" With a few more indignant paragraphs on the question of premeditation, Dennée quitted that part of his argument, assuming it clearly proved that, the act under dispute not being premeditated, was not "assassinat," but "homicide;" and if a homicide, he went on to contend, then involuntary; even though voluntary, still “légitime" or justifiable. "The homicide was justifiable, if it resulted from that fearful grasp into which, in the face of the seducer's pistol, Ponterie poured all his indignant spirit. It is admitted that the cords by which Dehap was tied had nothing to do with his death. One only of the surgeons had pretended that there had been other violence besides compression; and the procés-verbal had contradicted that one. The four ecchymoseis on the throat, the imprint of three fingers and a thumb, told their own tale. If there had been more hands there would have been more bruises. If the one hand or another had re stance of the open window-perfectly consistent with the hypothesis that Dehap introduced himself into the room-is inexplicable on the theory of a premeditated assault committed in the wood or the garden. But a further reason is advanced why Dehap did not go of his own accord into Cécile's room, and Morillon and the Sieur Blanc, recollecting Dehap's report of his interviews with Cécile, even of those by night, assert him to have assured them that he took care never to go into the house, because he could see her without." Here the advocate laid great stress upon the testimony of Cécile herself, in order to point out the extreme unlikelihood of this last suggestion being consistent with the facts of the case. "If there is one fact," he continued "which cannot be denied, it is that interviews had taken placethat an interview had taken place on this night in the chamber of Cécile. But if, when the evidence goes against you, you fall back on likelihood or probability, follow me, I beg you, the chain of improbabilities which fetters the theory of a premeditated assassination in the garden. First: What is this new sort of assassins who lie in ambush unarmed? If Dehap was attacked outside the house, if they lay in wait to surprise him, he should have been pierced by a sword, struck by a bullet, or felled by a club. Have you often heard of murderers going unarmed to surprise a man likely to be armed? Secondly: If you suppose Ponterie to be an assassin, you should allow him some craft in the concealment of his crime. At all events, the most dangerous, the most incon-peated the attack, the bruises would not have ceivable of all follies, would be to preserve a witness who could disclose the whole. No, gentlemen; a murderer wouldn't have left any remains of life in Dehap; for could he calculate, when he saw a returning spark of consciousness, how soon it would expire? Could he hope that Dehap would never recover his speech? And if Dehap had been caught in a trap, was it not certain that he would proclaim the murder in all its damning details? You know the marks made upon the neck of Dehap by the hand which seized him, you know that that hand was applied to his naked throat. Dehap, I appre-out hend, would not have been naked in the wood or in the garden. There it would have been his neckerchief which would have been grasped, and you know that it was his bare throat. This alone would have been enough to dispose of the assault outside. But, gentlemen, it is not only in all these details that there is improbability; there is another-apprehended already by the heart of every father. Ponterie, we are told, seized Dehap in the garden or in the wood. There he is master of the situation. He can dispose of his victim without compromising the honour of his daughter, who sleeps silent and innocent in her chamber, ignorant of the crime devised and accomplished. The place belongs to him, the night is dark, his sons and his servants are at his orders. Can he not destroy all traces of his crime? Instead of so doing, it is to the chamber of his daughter been so distinct. This single deed of Ponterie's had nothing to do with his will. Picture to yourselves the situation of the unhappy father at the moment of his entry into the room of his daughter! Everything is calculated to prevent reflection, to scatter reason, to breed rage. It is not he who acts: all his moral faculties are chained: he has no will; an invincible instinct hurries him on. In the violence of his transport he does not reason from causes to effects: foresees no results. If he inflicts death, the act is not that of reason, but of despair; and with reason there is no will. (It is curious to notice the different theories of psychology propounded by counsel on different sides of a question). You cannot say, then, gentlemen, that the homicide of Delap was voluntarily committed; and where there is no volition there is no crime. But should a transport of uncontrollable rage seem in your eyes a volition, even in that case you must conclude that the act which followed that volition was justifiable. In homicide légitime,' says the law, there is no crime; and it defines such homicide to be that which is indispensably necessary to the defence of self or others.' Was there indispensable necessity of defence in the case of the Sieur Ponterie ? Was his defence justifiable? That pistol with which Dehap was armed-it has been contended that it was provided to give a love-signal. A ridiculous supposition, because the whole family would have heard the explosion; and besides, is it necessary to load a pistol with ball in order to give a signal? But Ponterie, we are told, put the ball in the pistol; that ball did not fit the barrel, and the paper which formed the wadding was covered with the handwriting of Dehap. Ponterie, then, was plainly obliged to defend himself. I could hardly trust my own ears when I heard the suggestion that he might have got out of the way. O shame! O horror! Protectors of society-avengers of the outraged morality of a nation-may accusations like this fall on our own heads, if, to rebut them, we must descend to the indignity of such a thought! Ponterie acted in self-defence: he ought to have acted in self-defence. Shame on him who doubts the lawfulness of such an answer to the charge. Jury, you have felt the strength of the eloquent voice of the accuser. You know that his thundering words have given us no quarter. He has made the most of everything which seems to turn against us. We may fairly, then, cover ourselves under his ægis, when, in spite of himself, an opinion dictated by his profound sagacity falls from him in our favour. He has told you that, if the Ponteries are to be believed, you can have little hesitation in pronouncing the justifiableness of the deed." After the capital charge was discussed, the court proceeded to try the lesser issue as to the "attentat de la liberté individuelle"-a count of which it is not easy to appreciate the logical consistency. If Ponterie was justified in killing Debap, he was surely justified in detention of his person. If he was guilty of murder, it could not tell much in his favour that he had done perfectly right in binding him to the bed. Perhaps the most powerful part of Dennée's address is that in which he pleads for the entire justification of a man placed in such circumstances as those of his clients, on the broadest ground of religion and morality. But these points are rather general than special. Considering the turgid and exaggerated style of most of the orations of the bar of the first empire, Dennée's speech was forcible, elegant, and ingenious. The passages cited will indicate the line taken as well by the prosecution as by the defence. There is clearly much that is mysterious about the matter. A great deal might be, as a great deal was, said on both sides; and in spite of Maître Dennée's eloquence, some of the jury, as they proceeded to deliberate on their verdict, felt, no doubt, not a little puzzled. The verdict-as is so often the case with English as well as foreign verdicts-was not the least extraordinary part of an extraordinary trial. They said unanimously, "Not guilty" on the chief count of murder. Ponterie-Escot had not committed murder, he had committed justifiable homicide. If he was justifiable in the eyes of the law, he was innocent. No, said the jury, not innocent. Certain points as to "personal violence," "excess of violence," had been left to them by the court. On these they found the prisoners guilty, and the Ponterie-Escot family were If actually condemned to a year's imprisonment and a fine of 26,000 fr. (£1,040) for excess of violence to a man whom they were justified in killing. It is difficult to see how the collateral issue could have been raised at all. But that it should have been decided differently from the main accusation of murder is inexplicable. A man may be acquitted of murder and convicted of manslaughter. But the mind is hopelessly puzzled at the idea of one man's being perfectly justified in killing another, but wrong in assaulting him. The idea in the mind of the jury probably was that Ponterie did not mean to kill Dehap, and therefore could not be convicted of murder, but that he had killed him and need not have killed him, and therefore ought to be convicted of something. At any rate, there was a general opinion abroad that it was a sad thing that Dehap should have died. The justification of the act which caused death really covered all the minor points. But did Ponterie know of Dehap's coming? Was that really a surprise? Did the avenging father come stealthily on a sleeping victim? Did Cécile, having lost her lover, lie to save her father, brother, sisters? The narrative of the trial does not remove all doubt. THE CHIMNEY-CORNER.-The old chimney-corner! It is endeared to the heart from the earliest recollections. What dreams have been dreamed there! What stories told! What bright hours passed! It was a place to think in, a place to weep in, to laugh in, and much the cosiest place in the house to rest in. It was there where dear old grandmamma used to sit at her knitting, warming her poor old rheumatic back against the warm wall; where grandpa used to fall asleep over his newspaper; where mamma used to place her work-table, and read in the great armchair. It was there where you used to read fairytales in your childhood, folded all so snug, and warm, and cosy, in its warm lap, while the wind of a winter's night was whistling without. Your favourite plumcake was never so sweet as when eaten there, and the stories you read by the sitting-room fireside were never so fascinating as those read in the chimneycorner. If you were sad, you went there to cry. If you were merry, you, with your brothers and sisters, nestled there to have a right merry time. Even the puss and the old house-dog loved the old chimneycorner. Look back to the old house, where every room, every nook is so full of pleasant recollectionsthe family sitting-room, where were so many happy meetings; your own chamber, with its little window, where the sun came peeping in at morn; mother's room, still sacred with her presence. But, after all, the brightest memories cluster about the chimneycorner. You long to be folded in its faithful old bosom again, as you were in childhood, and have a good cry over all those past happy times. desolate now. The bright faces that clustered there of yore will never come back again. Black and dingy are the loved walls, and the smoke from the fire never makes them warm any more. But still memory sets up some of the holiest and most beautiful statues of her carving in the old chimney-corner! It is PAUL BLECKER. A Story in Three Parts. "Which serves life's purpose best, To enjoy or to renounce ?" PART I. A thorough American, who comprehends what America has to do, and means to help on with it, ought to choose to be born in New England, for the vitalized brain, finely chorded nerves, steely self-control; then to go West, for more live muscular passion, succulent manhood, naked-handed grip of his work. But when he wants to die, by all means let him hunt out a town in the valley of Pennsylvania or Virginia: Nature and man there are so ineffably selfcontained, content with that which is, shut in from the outer surge, putting forth their little peculiarities, as tranquil and glad to be alive as if they were pulseless sea-anemones, and after a while going back to the Being whence they came, just as tranquil and glad to be dead. Paul Blecker had some such fancy as this, that last evening before the regiment of which he was surgeon started for Harper's Ferry, while he and the Captain were coming from camp by the hill-road into the village (or burgh: there are no villages in Pennsylvania). Nothing was lost on Blecker; his wide nervous eyes took all in: the age and complacent quiet of this nook of the world, the full-blooded Nature asleep in the yellow June sunset; why! she had been asleep there since the beginning, he knew. The very Indians in these hills must have been a fishing, drowsy crew; their names and graves yet dreamily haunted the farms and creek-shores. The Covenanters who came after them never had roused themselves enough to shake them off. Covenanters! The Doctor began joking to himself, as he walked along, humming some tune, about how the spirit of every sect came out, always alike, in the temperament, the very cut of the face, or whim of accent. These descendants of the Covenanters, now,-Presbyterian elders and their wives, going down to camp to bid their boys good-bye, devoted them to death with just as stern integrity, as partial a view of the right, as their ancestors did theirs at Naseby or Drumclog: their religion loved its friends and hated its enemies just as bitterly as when it scowled at Monmouth; the boys," no doubt, would call themselves Roundheads, as they had done in the three months' service. Paul Blecker, who had seen a good many sides of the world, laughed to himself: the very Captain here, good, anxious, innocent as a baby, as he was, who looked at the 66 world exactly through Balfour of Burley's dead eyes, was going to cure the disease of it by the old pill of intolerance and bigotry. No wonder Paul laughed. The sobered Quaker evening was making ready for night: the yellow warmth overhead thinning into tintless space; the low hills drawing farther off in the melancholy light; the sky sinking nearer; clouds, unsteady all day, softened at last into a thoughtful purple, and crouching themselves slowly in the hollows of the horizon; the sweep of cornfields and woods and distant farms growing dim, daguerreotypelike; the tinkle of the sheep-bells on the meadows, the shouts of the boys in camp yonder, the bass drone of the frogs in the swamp dulling down into the remoteness of sleep. The Doctor slackened his sharp, jerking stride, and fell into the monotonous gait of his companion, glancing up to him. Mc Kinstry, he thought, was going out to battle to-morrow with just as cool phlegm and childlike content as he would set out to buy his merino ewes; but he would receive no pay-meant to transfer it to his men. And he would be in the thickest of the fight, you might bet on that. Umph! with his big, leisurely frame, his neat yellow hair, and the blue eyes mildly peering through spectacles. Then, having satisfactorily anatomized McKinstry, he turned to the evening again with open senses, the sensitive pulsing of his wide nostrils telling that even the milky scent of the full-uddered cows gave him keen enjoyment. The cows were going home from pasture, up shady barn-lanes, into the greyer shadows about the houses on either side of the road, in whose windows lights were beginning to glimmer. Solid old homesteads they were, stone or brick, never wood. Out in these Western settlements, a hundred years ago, they built durable homes, curiously enough, more than in the Northern States; planted oaks about them, that bore the strength of the earth up to heaven in sturdy arms, shaming the graceful, uncertain elm of shallower soils. Just such old farm-houses as those, Blecker thought, would turn out such old-time moulded men as McKinstry-houses whose orchards still held on to the Waldower and Smoke-house apples; their gardens gay with hollyhocks and crimson prince's-feather; on the book-shelves the "Spectator" and "Gentleman's Magazine." The women of them kept up the old-fashioned knitting-parties, and a donation-visit to the pastor once a-year; and the men were all gone to the war, to keep the Union as it was in their fathers' time, and would doubtless vote the conservative ticket next election because their fathers did, which would make the war a horrible farce. The town, Blecker thought, had rooted itself in between the hills with as solid a persistence as the prejudices of its builders. Obstinately steep streets, shaded by gnarled locust-trees-houses drawn back from the side-walks, in surly dread of all new comers-the very smoke, vapouring through the sky, had defiance in it of the outer barbarous world and its vulgar newness. Yet the town had an honest country heart in it, if it was a bit grey and crusty with age. Blecker, knowing it as he did, did not wonder the boys who left it named a village for it out in Kansas, trying to fancy themselves at home-or that one old beggar in it asked to be buried in the middle of the street, "So's I kin hear the stages acomin' in, an' know if the old place is a-gittin' on." There seemed to be a migration from it tonight: they met, every minute, buggies, oldfashioned carriages, horsemen. "Going out to camp," McKinstry said; "the boys all have some one to bid them good-bye." What a lonely, reserved voice the man had! Blecker had the curiosity of all sensitive men to know the soul-history of people; he glanced again keenly in McKinstry's face. Pshaw! one might as well ask their story from the deaf and dumb. But that they were dumb- there was hint of a tragedy in that! Everybody stopped to speak to the Doctor. He had been but a few months in the place; but the old churchgoers had found him out as a passionate, free-and-easy, honourable fellow, full of joke and anecdote-shrewd, too. They "fellowshipped" with him heartily, and were glad when he got the post of surgeon with their sons. If there were anything more astringent below this, any more real self in the man, held back, belonging to a world outside of theirs, they did not see it. They knew him better, they thought, than they did Daniel McKinstry, who had grown up among them, just as mild and silent when he was a tow-haired boy as now, a man of fortyfive. He touched his hat to them now, and went on; while Blecker leaned on the carriagedoors, his brown face aglow with fun, his uneasy fingers drumming boyishly on the panel. Not knowing that through the changeful face, and fierce, pitiful eyes of the boy, the man Paul Blecker looked coolly out, testing, labelling them. The boy in him, that they saw, Nature had made; but years of a hand-to-hand fight with starvation came after-crime, and society, whose work is later than Nature's, and sometimes better done. "Fine girl!" said the Doctor, touching his hat to Miss Mallard, as she cantered past. "Got a head of her own, too. Made a deused good speech when the presented the flag today." Miss Mallard overheard him, as he intended she should, and blushed a visible acknowledg- Blecker. "She is a woman," said the Captain, blushing, differently from the lady, however. "And if she is?" turning suddenly. "She has the nature of a Bowery rough. Pah, Mc Kinstry! Sexes stand alike with me. If a woman's flesh is weaker-grained a bit, what of that? Whoever would earn esteem must work for it." The Captain said nothing, stammered a little, then, hoisting his foot on a stump, tied his shoe nervously. Blecker smiled, a queer, sorrowful smile, as if, oddly enough, he felt sorry for himself. "I'd like to think of women as you do, Mac," he said. "You never knew many?" "Only two, until now,-my mother and little Sarah. They're gone now." Sarah? The Doctor was silent a moment, thinking. He had heard of a sister of Mc disease, whom he had nursed until the end. Kinstry's, sick for years with some terrible what his life had been given up for, was it? She was Sarah, most likely. Well, that was There was a twitching about McKinstry's wide mouth: Paul looked away from him a moment, and then, glancing furtively back, began again : "No, I never knew my mother or sister, Mac. The great discovery of this age is woman, old fellow! I've been knocked about too much not to have lost all delusion about them. It did well enough for the crusading times to hold them as angels in theory, and in practice as idiots; but 'em their places as flesh and blood, with exactly in these rough-and-tumble days we'd better give such wants and passions as mer.." The Captain never argued. he said, drily. "I don't know," After that he jogged on in silence, glancing askance at the masculine self-assertant figure of his companion-at the face, acrid, unyielding, beneath its surface-heat; ruminating mildly to himself on what a good thing it was for him never to have known any but old-fashioned women. This Blecker, now, had been made by intercourse with such women as those he talked of: he came from the North. The Captain looked at him with a vague, moony compassion: the usual Western vision of a Yankee female in his head - Bloomerclad, hatchet-faced, capable of anything, from courting a husband to commanding a ship. (It is all your fault, genuine women of New England! Why don't you come among us, and know your country, and let your country know you? Better learn the meaning of Chicago than of Venice, for your own sakes, believe me). They were near the town now, the road cross-country farther up the mountains. They're ing a railroad-track, where the hill, chopped apart different from us." for the gradient, left bare the black stratum of coal tinged here and there with a reddish brown and whitish shale. "Hillo! this means iron," said the Doctor, climbing up the bank, cat-like, to break off a bit; "and here's an odd formation, Mac. Take it into old Gurney." The Captain cleaned his spectacles with a piece of chamois-leather, put them on, folded the leather and replaced it in its especial place in his pocket, before he took the bit of rock. "All that finical ceremony he would go through in the face of the enemy," thought Blecker, jumping down on the track. "Give it to old Gurney, Mac. It will ensure you a welcome." "It is curious, Doctor Blecker. But you". "I never care to gratify anybody. Besides, the old gentleman and I are two. Our instincts cried out, 'Ware dog!' the first day. You are a friend of his, eh, Mac?" The Captain's face grew red, like a bashful woman's. He thought Blecker had divined his secret-would haul it out roughly in another moment. If this slang-talking Yankee should take little Lizzy's name into his mouth! But the Doctor was silent, even looked away until the heat on the poor old bachelor's face had died out. He knew McKinstry's thought of that little girl well enough, but he held the childhearted man's secret tenderly and charily in his hand. Paul Blecker did talk slang and assert himself; but every impulse in him was clean, delicate, liberal. So, Paul remaining silent, the Captain took heart of grace, going down the street, and ventured back to the Gurney question. "I thought I would accompany you there, Doctor Blecker. They might only think it seemly in me to bid farewell. I" Blecker nodded. The man had not been able to hide an harassed frown that day under his usual vigour of speech and look. It becaine more palpable after this; his voice, when he did speak, was fretful, irritable-his lips compressed; he stopped at a village-well to drink, as though his mouth were parched. How old is that house-the Gurneys'?" he asked, affecting carelessness, to baffle the curious inspection of McKinstry. The Fort? We call it the Fort because it was used for one in Indian times," McKinstry began, chafing his lean whiskers delightedly. Old houses were his hobby, especially this which they approached-a narrow, long building of unhewn stone, facing on the street, the lintels and doors worm-caten, and green with moss. "Built by Bradford, the new part,-Bradford, of the Whiskey Insurrection, you know? Carvings on the walls brought over the mountains, when to bring them by panels was a twomonths' journey. There's queer stories hang about these old Pennsylvanian homesteads." "Bradford? The Gurneys are a new family here, then ?" Came here but a few years back, from a "How, different ?" with a keen, surprised glance. "I see they are a newer people than the others but I thought the village accepted them with shut eyes." The Captain stammered again, "Old Father Gurney, as we call him, taught school when they first came, but he gave that up. This section is a good geological field, and he wished to devote himself to that," he went on, evading the question. "They live off of those acres at the back of the house since that. You see? Corn, potatoes, buckwheat,-good yield." "Who oversees the planting?" sharply. McKinstry wondered vaguely at the little Doctor's curious interest in the Gurneys, but went on with his torpid, slow answers: "That eldest girl, I believe-Grey. Cow there, you see, and ducks. He's popular, old Father Gurney. People have a liking for his queer ways, help him collect specimens for his cabinet; the boys bring him birds to stuff, and snakes. If it hadn't been for the troubles breaking out, he was on the eve of a most important discoverythe crater of an exhausted volcano in Virginia.” McKinstry lowered his voice cautiously. "Fact, sir-in Mercer County. But the guerillas interfered with his researches." "I think it probable. So he stuffs birds, does he?" Blecker's lips closing tighter. "And keeps the snakes in alcohol. There are shelves in Miss Lizzy's room quite full of them. That lower room it was, but Joseph has taken it for a study. She has the upper one for her flowers and her father's birds." 'And Grey, and the twins, and the four boys bedaubed with molasses, and the dog, and the cooking?" "Stowed away somewhere," the Captain mildly responded. Dr. Blecker was testy. "You know Joseph her brother? I mean our candidate for Congress next term?" "Yes. Democratic. J. Schuyler Gurney,give him his name, Mac. Republican last winter. Joseph trims to wind and tide well. I heard him crow like a barn-yard fowl on the Capitol-steps at Washington when Lincoln called for the seventy-five thousand: now, he hashes up Breckinridge's conservative speech for your hickory-backed farmers. Does he support the family, Mac?" "His election-expenses are heavy.” McKinstry coloured. Dr. Blecker was coarse, an ill-bred man, he suspected-noting, too, the angry repression in his eyes, as he stood leaning on the gate, looking in at the Fort, for they had reached it by this time. The Captain looked in, too, through the dusky clumps of altheas and plum-trees, at the old stone house, dyed tawny-grey in the evening light, and talked on, the words falling unconscious and simple as a stream of milk. The old plodder was no longer dumb. Blecker had hit on the one valve |