But my interest in her is of an early date.

I was called upon, Mr.Mannering, being then sheriff of that county, to investigate the particulars of a murder which had been committed near Ellangowan the day on which this poor child was born; and which, by a strange combination that I was unhappily not able to trace, involved the death or abstraction of her only brother, a boy of about five years old.

No, Colonel, I shall never forget the misery of the house of Ellangowan that morning! the father half-distracted--the mother dead in premature travail--the helpless infant, with scarce any one to attend it, coming wawling and crying into this miserable world at such a moment of unutterable misery.

We lawyers are not of iron, sir, or of brass, any more than you soldiers are of steel.

We are conversant with the crimes and distresses of civil society, as you are with those that occur in a state of war, and to do our duty in either case a little apathy is perhaps necessary.