It is this day you should have remembered before you
began that night's work. Sorrow's the day I ever met you at all,
with the miserable life you led me; and you know I was always the
good wife to you until you gave yourself entirely to the devil with
your wicked ways. Wasn't I always on the watch for you every evening
looking for you, and the chop on the fire, and the hot tea, and
everything comfortable? And is it to hang me now you want to pay me
back for the trouble I took for you and all the misery I suffered
these long years? And the death of my poor father, who found me in
gaol, is at your door too, for he would have been alive and well this
day but for the deed you done, which broke his poor old heart; the
Lord have mercy on him. And who is to blame but your own self for
being in this place at all? You not only done the man to death, but
you must go about the bush bragging of it to strangers, and twisting
the halter for your own neck like a born idiot; and that's what you
are, in spite of your roguery and cunning."
And so on for two hours of hell until the jury came back. They
acquitted Julia and found her husband guilty. She left the court
without once looking back, and he faced the jury alone.
Judge Pohlman had never before sent a man to the gallows. He made
the usual little moral speech, and bewailed his own misfortune in
having to perform so disagreeable a duty.
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