Important Evidence

A Lawyer’s Story

by Sylvanus Cobb, Jr.

One bright morning in the month of May our usually quiet village was thrown into a state of wild excitement by the intelligence that Laura Downing had been murdered. Her lifeless body had been found upon the sandy shore of the large pond, with a bullet hole through the head. The ball had entered between the eyes, and had passed entirely through the brain; and the empty pistol was found by her side.

It may be asked, who was Laura Downing?

She was an orphan, and had been generally beloved by all who knew her. Her father, who had been a poor, hard-working man, had been dead a number of years, and during the past five or six years, Laura had worked as she could find opportunity to support an invalid mother; but only a few months before the time of which I write that mother had died, and Laura had lived alone in the little cot which had been her home since she was born—a period, according to the parish register, of nineteen years.

The coroner came, and summoned a jury, and called such witnesses as he could find; and, after due examination and deliberation, a verdict was rendered, to the effect that Laura Downing had come to her death by means of a bullet discharged from a pistol; and they believed that said pistol had been in the hands of Oliver Cartwright at the time it was thus fatally discharged.

Oliver Cartwright was arrested, and when the case came before the grand jury, they found a bill against him—a bill accusing him of the murder of Laura Downing,—and he was committed for trail.

And who was Oliver Cartwright?

He was a young man of five and twenty years of age, who had been born and brought up in the town, and who had sustained a fair reputation for honesty and sobriety; though he had never been regarded as a very bright or promising youth. His… Read More