University of Virginia Library

2. PART SECOND.

The interest which I took in Brown's mother
and Sarah, induced me to visit them after he was
sent to the penitentiary, to which he was sentenced
for ten years.

His afflicted mother, overcome by accumulated
sorrow for his many crimes and their consequences,
rapidly sank into the grave. I happened to call
at her humble dwelling the night she died. Sarah
supported her by her needle, and a hard task it
was; for the doctor's bill and the little luxuries
which her relative needed, more than consumed
her hard earnings.

The old woman called me to her bedside, and
together with Sarah, made me promise that if I
saw her son again, I would tell him that with her
dying breath she prayed for him. The promise
was made; and while she was in the act of praying,
her voice grew inaudible; and, uttering with her
last feeble breath an ejaculation for mercy, not
for herself, but for her outcast child, her spirit
passed to the judgment-seat; and if memory and
affection hold sway in the disembodied soul, doubtless

she will be a suppliant there for him, as she
was here.

After the death of the old woman, I saw Sarah
once or twice, and then suddenly lost all trace of
her. More than a year had now elapsed since
Brown's conviction, and in increasing ill health
and the presence of other scenes and circumstances,
as touching as those of the mother and cousin,
I had forgotten them. I was advised by my physician
to forsake all business, obtain a vehicle, and
by easy stages, travelling whither fancy led, try
to resuscitate my system. In fulfilment of this
advice, I was proceeding on my way to Columbus,
Ohio, with the double purpose of improving my
health, and, by making acquaintances in the State
where I had settled, facilitate and increase my
practice, should I ever be permitted to resume my
profession.

The sun was just setting in a summer's evening,
as, within a half a mile of Columbus, I passed a
finely formed female on the road, who was stepping
along with a bundle on her arm. There was something
of interest in the appearance of the girl
which caused me to look back at her after I had
passed. Instantly I drew up my horse. It was
Sarah Mason. Her meeting with me seemed to
give her great pleasure. I asked her if she would
not ride, and thanking me, she entered my vehicle
and took a seat by my side.

She had been very anxious to obtain a pardon
for Brown before his mother's death. I had told
her it would be fruitless, unless she could get the
jury who condemned him, together with the
judges, to sign the recommendation to the governor,
and I did not believe they would do it. I,
however, at her earnest solicitation, drew up the
petition, and when I last asked her about her success,
which was, in fact, the last time I saw her,
she told me she had not got one of the jury to
sign it, but that several had told her that they
would do so, if she would obtain previously the
signature of the presiding judge. By the law of
Ohio a judgeship is not held for life, but for a
term of years. The term of office of the presiding
judge on Brown's trial had expired, and a new
party prevailing in the Legislature, from that
which had appointed him, he had failed to obtain
the reappointment. He had removed to St. Louis
for the purpose of practising law there; and thither
Sarah had repaired with her unsigned petition.
After repeated solicitations and prayerful entreaties,
she at last prevailed on the ex-judge to
sign it. She then returned to Cincinnati, and
after considerable trouble succeeded in finding ten
of the jury, some of whom followed the judge's
example. The rest refused, stating, what was too
true, that the ease with which criminals obtained
pardon from gubernatorial clemency in this country,

was one of the great causes of the frequency
of crime; for it removed the certainty of punishment
which should ever follow conviction; and
which has more effect upon the mind than severity
itself, when there is a hope of escaping it.

A new governor, in the rapid mutations of official
life in the United States, had become dispenser
of the pardoning power shortly after
Brown's conviction, and it was his ear that Sarah
personally sought, armed with the recommendation.

He was a good, easy man, where party influence
was not brought to bear adversely on him, and
after he had read the petition, Sarah's entreaty
soon prevailed, and Brown was pardoned.

The very day he was pardoned he called on me
at Russel's hotel, with his cousin; and after they
had mutually returned me their thanks for the interest
which I took in their behalf, he promised
me, voluntarily, to pay me a fee with the first
earnings he got, which he said solemnly should be
from the fruits of honest industry.

He took my address and departed. I thought no
more of it till, one day, most opportunely, I
received through the post-office a two hundred
dollar bill of the United States Bank, with a well-written
letter from him, stating that he had reformed
his course of life, and that it was through
the influence of his cousin, whom he had married,

that he had done so. He said that he had assumed
another name in the place where he then dwelt,
which he would have no objection to communicate
to myself; but, as it was of no consequence to me,
and might be to him, should my letter fall into the
hands of another person, he had withheld it, together
with the name of the place where himself and
wife were located. The letter had been dropped
in the Cincinnati post-office, and there was no clue
whereby I could have traced him, had I entertained
such a wish, which I did not.

Some time after this, I was a sojourner in the
South, spellbound by the fascinations of a lady,
with whom I became acquainted the previous summer
in Philadelphia, where she was spending the
sultry season. She lived with her parents, on a
plantation near a certain city on the Mississippi,
which, for peculiar reasons, I may not name. Her
brother was practising law there, and he and I
became close cronies. Frequently, I rode to the
city with him; and, on one occasion, we were both
surprised, as we entered it, by an unusual commotion
among the inhabitants, who were concentrating
in crowds to the spot, collected by some strange
and boisterous attraction.

My friend rode into the mêlée, and presently
returned to my side, with the crowd about him,
from whom he was evidently protecting a man, who
walked with his hand on the neck of my friend's

horse. The man walked as if he felt that he was
protected, but would die game if he were attacked.

“Sheriff,” called out my friend to a tall person
who was expostulating with the crowd, “it is your
duty to protect Bassford; he has lived here with
us some time, has a wife and family, a good name,
and he must and shall have a fair trial.”

“Colonel Cameron's empty pocketbook was
found near Bassford's house,” exclaimed one of
the crowd, “and Bassford's dagger by the dead
body.”

“And Bassford and the Colonel were overheard
quarrelling a few hours before he was killed,”
shouted another.

“Let Bassford answer, then, according to law,”
said my friend. “I will kill the first man who
lays violent hands upon him.”

“And I will justify and assist you,” said the
sheriff. “Mr. Leo, Mr. Gale, and you, sir,” continued
the officer, turning to me, “I summon you
to assist me in lodging this man safely in jail, there
to abide the laws of his country.”

Awed by the resolution which the sheriff and his
posse exhibited, the crowd slunk back, but with
deep mutterings of wrath, while we gathered around
Bassford, and hastened with him to the jail, which
was not far off, in which we soon safely lodged him.

It occurred to me, when I first looked on Bassford,
that I had seen him before, but I could not

tell where. A minuter scrutiny, as I stood by his
side in the jail, satisfied me that he was no other
than my old client, Brown. Feeling that my
recognition of him would not advance his interests,
if I should be questioned about him, I maintained
silence, and stood by a spectator. Brown stated
to the sheriff that he wished my friend, whom I
will call De Berry, to be his counsel, and requested
that he might be placed alone with him, where he
might have some private conversation with him.
The sheriff said, “certainly;” and we all retired,
De Berry asking me to wait for him without. I
did so; and, in a few minutes, he came to me, and
said that the prisoner wished to see me. “I presume,
sheriff, you will have no objection?”

“Not the least,” replied the sheriff. “Take Mr.
Trimble in with you.”

I accordingly entered; and, the moment the door
was closed, Brown asked me if I remembered him.

“Perfectly,” I replied.

“Mr. Trimble,” he continued, “I saw you with
Mr. De Berry, and knew that you recognized me.
I supposed that you might tell him what you knew
of me, to my prejudice. Here I have maintained
a good character, and I therefore resolved to see
you with him, and tell you the circumstances. I
am as guiltless now as I was guilty then.

“Mr. De Berry says that the court, upon application,
will admit you, if it is necessary, to defend

me with him, and I wish you would do it. Let me
tell you this affair. I know it looks black against
me, but hear me first. After my cousin obtained
my pardon in Ohio, I married her, swore an oath
to lead a better life, and, before God, have done
so. Sarah was and is everything to me. Not for
the wealth of worlds would I involve myself in
guilt which might fall upon her and her children.
Knowing, Mr. Trimble, that in Ohio I could not
obtain employment, or reinstate myself in character,
I came here, with a changed name and
nature, to commence, as it were, the world again.
Since I have been here, my character, as Mr. De
Berry will tell you, has been without reproach.
But, old associations and companions dog us,
though we fly from them. I have been located
here on a little farm belonging to Mr. De Berry,
which, with the aid of two negroes hired from him,
I cultivate, raising vegetables and such things for
the market. I had hoped the past was with the
past, but last week there came along one of my
old associates, who urged me to join with him and
others in a certain depredation. I told him of my
altered life, and positively refused. He insisted,
and taunted me with hypocrisy, and so forth, till
he nearly stung me to madness. I bore it all,
until, on my telling him that my wife had reformed
me, and that on her account I meant to be honest,
he threw slurs on her of the blackest dye. I could
bear it no longer, but leaped upon him, and would
have slain him, had not some of his companions
came up and rescued him. It was on the banks of
the river, in a lonely spot that we met, and their
coming up might have been accident or not. He
vowed vengeance against me and mine, and left.
Colonel Cameron, as you know, Mr. De Berry,
bore the character of an overbearing and tyrannical
man. We had some dealings together. He
was in my debt, and wished to pay me in flour. I
told him politely it was the money which I wanted.
He swore that I should not have money or flour
either. He raised his whip to strike me. I flew
into a passion, dared him to lay the weight of his
finger on me, and abused him, as a man in a
passion and injured would do under the circumstances;
perhaps I threatened him; I do not know
exactly what I said in my anger. This was yesterday
afternoon. It seems that the Colonel went
to Mr. Pottea's afterwards, returned after night,
was waylaid, and killed. How his pocketbook
came by my house, I know not. As for the dagger,
I had such a one. When I changed my name
I thought, to make everything about me seem
natural with it, that I would have Bassford
engraved on it. I lost it some months ago, and
have not seen it since, till to-day. Such, gentlemen,
is the truth; but, great God! what is to
become of myself and family, with such testimony
against me? Two or three men in the crowd called
out that they knew me before, that I had been in
the Ohio penitentiary, that my name is Brown;
and here is my quarrel with the Colonel, his murder
on the heels of it, my dagger by his dead body,
and his empty pocketbook by my house. Notwithstanding
all this, gentlemen, I am innocent. Do
you think that, if I had murdered him, I would
not have hid my dagger? and would I have rifled
his pocketbook and pitched it away by my own
door-sill, where anybody might find it? No; my
enemy must have contrived this to ruin me.”

At this instant the door was opened by the
sheriff, and Brown's wife admitted; she threw herself
into his arms, exclaiming, “He is innocent,
I know he is innocent!” while Brown, utterly
overcome by his emotions, pressed her to his heart,
and wept bitterly. I whispered to De Berry that
we had better leave them, and accordingly withdrew.

That afternoon, Mrs. Brown called to see me.
She asked me if I would aid her husband; and I
promised that I would. She looked neat and tidy,
said she had two children, and I saw that she was
soon again to be a mother. She told me the same
story that Brown had told me, and I could not
but express the deepest regret for his and her
situation.

The name of Brown's former accomplice, with

whom he had quarrelled, was Burnham. He was
a desperate character, perfectly unfeeling and unprincipled,
and possessed of great energy of spirit
and frame. It is surprising that Brown should
have overcome him. Brown's mastery originated,
doubtless, in the fury of his insulted feelings.

De Berry became very much interested in
Brown's case. The morning of his interference in
his behalf, Brown had been taken upon the charge
of murdering Colonel Cameron. While the sheriff,
who was well-disposed towards him, was proceeding
with him to the magistrate's, the crowd had
gathered round them so thickly as to interrupt
their progress, and Brown had been separated
from the officer. The crowd, among whose leaders
was Burnham, had made furious demonstrations
against the prisoner; but his resolute manner had
prevented their laying hands on him, when De
Berry and myself rode up, and the sheriff, as we
have related, took his charge to jail, to prevent an
outrage, until the excitement had somewhat subsided.

The next morning De Berry insisted upon having
a hearing before the magistrate, asserting that he
meant to offer bail for Brown. As we proceeded to
the magistrate's, we stopped at Brown's humble
dwelling, and took his wife and children with us.
The tidiness of his afflicted wife and children, and

the evident order of his household and garden,
made a most favorable impression upon us.

As we approached the magistrate's, we wondered
that we saw nobody about the door of his office;
but we learned, on arriving, that the officer of the
law had determined to have the hearing in the
court-house, in consequence of the anticipation of
a great crowd, who would be anxious to hear. To
the court we repaired. There was an immense
concourse about the door, though the sheriff had
not yet appeared with his charge. De Berry sent
the wife and children to the jail, that they might
come with him to the court-house, and by their
presence and the sympathy that they would excite,
prevent any outbreak from the mob. We took our
station on the court-house steps, where, elevated
above the crowd, we could observe their demeanor
as the sheriff and Brown advanced. By our side
stood a tall gaunt Kentuckian, clad in a hunting-shirt,
and leaning on his rifle. He seemed to be
an anxious observer of myself and friend. He soon
gathered from our conversation the position in
which we stood towards Brown, and remarked to
us—

“Strangers, I suppose you are lawyers for Bassford;
I am glad he has help, I fear he'll need it;
but he once did me a service, and I want to see
right 'twixt man and man.”

Before De Berry could reply, we were attracted

by a stir among the crowd, and not far off, in the
direction of the jail, we saw the sheriff advancing
with the prisoner, who was accompanied by his
wife and children. Approaching close behind
them, were several horsemen, among whom we
could not fail to observe Burnham, from the eagerness
with which he pressed forward.

With not so much as the ordinary bustle and
confusion incident upon such occasions, in fact,
with less expressed emotion, the crowd gathered
into the court-house, the squire occupying the seat
of the judge, and the prisoner a chair within the
bar, by the side of De Berry and myself, with his
anxious wife to his right. The prosecuting attorney,
who was a warm friend of the deceased
colonel, seated himself opposite to us. Burnham
pressed through the crowd within the bar, and stationed
himself near the prosecutor, to whom I overheard
him say—

“There are folks here who can prove that his
real name is not Bassford but Brown, and that he
was pardoned out of the Ohio Penitentiary; that
man, by his lawyer, can prove it, so can I; but you
had better call him, he knows—”

“Let me pass, let me pass!” exclaimed a female
at this moment, pressing through the crowd with
stern energy; “I'll tell the truth; Bassford is innocent!”

“She's crazy,” exclaimed Burnham, looking

around with alarm, and making a threatening gesture,
as if privately to her, to hush, forgetting that
the eyes of all were upon him.

“Crazy!” retorted the woman, who was of slender
person and fine features, though they were distorted
by excess and passion, and who seemed to
be possessed by some furious purpose, as if by a
fiend. “They shall judge if I am crazy. Prove
it, and then you may prove that Bassford is
guilty. Gentlemen, John Burnham there, murdered
Colonel Cameron! There is the money that
Burnham took from the dead body; there are the
letters, here is his watch! Bassford's dagger he
got in a quarrel with him; he murdered the colonel
with it, and left it by the dead body, and the
pocketbook by Bassford's house, to throw the guilt
on him!”

“How can you prove this, good woman?” inquired
the magistrate, while the crowd, in breathless
eagerness, were as hushed as death.

“Prove it! By myself, by these letters, by that
watch, by that dagger, by everything—by what I
am, by what I was! The time has been when I
was as innocent as I am now vicious—as spotless
as I am now abandoned; but for that man, that
time were now. Hear me for a moment; the truth
that is in me shall strike your hearts with justice
and with terror; shall acquit the innocent, and
appal the guilty. In better days I knew both

these men; Bassford I loved, he loved me. My
education had been good; that was all my parents
left me, with a good name. He was thoughtless
and wild then, but not criminal; he fell in with
this man, Burnham, whom he brought to my
father's house, and made his confidant. Burnham
professed a partiality for me, which I rejected with
scorn. He led Bassford into error, into crime.
He coiled himself into his confidence, and made
him believe that I had abandoned myself to him;
at the same time he was torturing me with inventions
of Bassford's faithlessness towards me. Each
of us, Bassford and myself, grew reserved towards
the other, without asking or making any explanation.
Oh! the curse of this pride—this pride!
Burnham widened the breach! He drove me nearly
mad with jealousy, and Bassford with distrust. Bassford
and I parted in anger. Burnham all the while
pressed his passion on me. Bassford left that part
of the country, Hagerstown, Maryland. I promised
to marry Burnham; in a spell of sickness,
which fell upon me in the absence of Bassford,
he drugged me with opium, made me what I am,
and abandoned me to my fate. After many
wretched years of ignominy and shame, I fell in
at Louisville, three weeks since, with Burnham; I
came here with him. He saw Bassford—tried to
draw him into his guilty plots—they quarrelled;
and he—he never, never told me aught until he
had done the deed; he murdered Colonel Cameron
to ruin Bassford; and there, I repeat it,” pointing
to the watch, the money, and the letters of the deceased,
“there are the evidences of his guilt.”

“Sheriff,” said the magistrate, “take Burnham
into your custody.”

“Kill him!” cried out an hundred voices from
the crowd, while several attempted to seize him.
Uttering a yell like a wild Indian at bay, Burnham
eluded their grasp, and drawing at the same
instant a bowie-knife from his breast, he darted
forward and plunged it into the heart of the woman.
The crowd shrank back in terror as the
death-cry of the victim broke upon their ear; while
the murderer brandished the bloody knife over
his head, and, before any one could arrest him,
sprang out of one of the windows of the court-room.
It was a leap which none chose to follow;
and all rushed instantaneously to the door. Before
the crowd got out, Burnham had mounted his
horse, and made for the woods. Several of the
horsemen, who had come in the line, mounted and
darted after, as if to take him.

“They want to save him,” exclaimed several,
who were also mounting other horses that stood by.

“Clear the road!” shouted the Kentuckian,
who, rifle in hand, had sprang upon a mound,
within a few feet of the court-house. The horsemen
looked fearfully back, as if instinctively they

understood the purpose of the hunter, and spurred
their horses from the track of the flying man. The
Kentuckian raised his rifle to his shoulder; instantly
its sharp report was heard. All eyes were
turned to the murderer, who was urging his steed
to the utmost. He started, as if in renewed energy,
then reeled to and fro like a drunken man, then
fell upon the neck of his horse, at the mane of
which he seemed to grasp blindly; in a moment
more he tumbled to the earth like a dead weight.
He was dragged, with his foot in the stirrup,
nearly a mile before his horse was overtaken and
stopped. The bullet of the sure-sighted Kentuckian
had lodged in the murderer's brain. He
had fallen dead from his saddle, and was so disfigured
as scarcely to be recognized. The body
was consigned to a prayerless, hurried, and undistinguished
grave by the roadside.

Brown is still alive, where I left him, an entirely
reformed and honest man. A stone slab, with
some rude attempts at sculpture on it, at the foot
of Brown's garden, designates the mortal resting-place
of the woman, who, though fallen and degraded,
was true to her first affection, and braved
death to save him. His children, with holy gratitude,
have kept the weeds from growing there, and
ever, in their play, become silent when they approach
it.