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circumstances may exist, singly and together, and yet the prisoner
be innocent. In the evidence offered at Bosion they inay thus exist.
Dr. Parkman was never seen to enter Webster's room. The
bones in the furnace, the remains in the laboratory m4y exist, and
yet Dr. Parkman be living somewhere, or lying at the bottom of
some road-side ditch. So long as there is a possibility of such a
thing, how dreadful appears the verdict ! The knife-the twine-
the towels-the hooks-the box-the tan--the intricacy of accounts
-the anonymous letters may all exist, and yet no guilty connection
between them and Dr. Webs ter subsist in reality. There was blood
on the knife, but the express man saw Webster using it when he
had just cut his hand. A guilty man would not have concealed
knife and remains logether. An idiot would scarcely have failed to
perceive their connection. Fragments of bone could be pocketed
and thrown away. If Dr. Webster, being guilty, could act with the
self-possession he exhibited at home, would he not have used the
same at his laboratory ? The twine may have been purchased inno-
cently and used by others. The towels swathed on the limbs, looked
more like conspiracy than guilty concealment, because the limbs were
but common to the human species; when connected with marked tow-
els they approached identification. The hooks were found wrapped
up in newspaper, the same_as when purchased. The bog was in no
wise related to the remains. If Professor Webster had purchased a
hair trunk it would have been the same--perhaps a stronger circumr
stance, for it would have been said, hitherto he sent things to
Fayal in air-tight boxes, but here is some new contrivance less sus-
picious than a box. The bag of tan had, to all appearances, been
untouched. The grape vines were not clutched with avidity, but
remained scattered about the passage-way through evident uncon-
cern. Dr. Webster was no book-keeper, but proverbial for his
slovenliness in pecuniary transactions. There are hundreds of men
wedded to books; and affairs of life not appertaining to this bank-
note world, who cannot one week remember the transactions in
money matters of the last week i who have less management of the
purse than a child. The Professor had, at all times in his life,
occasion to save up money ; for day by day his' creditors pressed
him. up, and any bank account lying to his credit was sure to be
trustee d. The anonymous letters, if written by Webster, were
little likely to be mailed at his place of residence,
And so we might continue-not for the purpose of proving Dr.
Webster innocent. That, under the net of circumstances woven
about him, would be a dangerous task. But to show that other series
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