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EDWARD D. WORRELL. 85

pothesis but her guilt was not excluded. But it never oc-
curred to him to suggest to the jury, that as the house in
whieh the woman was murdered stood upon an alley, on the
opposite side of which was another house, also of two stories,
it was possible that the murderer entered the opposite build-
ing, hoisted a window facing the alley, extended a plank to
the aill of the window of the upper story of that in which the
mistress was sleeping, walked across on the plank, raised the
gash, deacended, did the deed, and returning the same way,
hid all trace of the crime. He did not think of that! The
jury did not think of that! The boasted reason and the quick
imagination did not take in their wide range any combina-
tion of circumstances so wild and extravagant; and eo the
innocent girl periehed on the gallows! And yet, all this wild
extravagance was simple truth! Simple as the way to make
an egg stand on end, just as simple as the trath which philos-
opby pronounced impossible till the egg did stand on end,
and which philosophy then pronounced # truth so simple that
none but the simple ever doubted it. ‘‘Hang up philosophy,’’
which cannot see the truth; and “‘hang up’’ the “‘reasoning
process’? which hangs the innocent.

I continue from the authority the history of the girl:

“It afterwards appeared, by the confession of one of the real
murderers, that they had gained admission to the house, which was
situated in a narrow street, by means of a board thrust across the
street, from an upper window of a house opposite to an upper win-
dow of the house of the deceased; and retreating the same way, leav-
ing no trace behind them.”

This is the rock on which circumstantial evidence ever
spills. We cannot reason safely from the known to the un-
Jmown, Truth half told is always a lie. Circumstantial evi-
dence never brings out all the facts, the whole truth, and we
eannot by imagination supply what is left out, Worse than
that, ‘‘trath lies in the bottom of the well,’’ and the human
mind dislikes the labor of going down to bring it up. If it
ean find anything resembling truth at the top, it will avoid
the descent.

It is needless to go through the mournful catalogue of ju-
dicial murders done by circumstantial evidence. Its victims

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