"I know you are innocent," she whispered, and gave him one look of loving encouragement as she followed me to her place.
Ambrose never lost his self-control.

I may have been wrong; but I thought this a bad sign.
The case, as stated for the prosecution, told strongly against the suspected men.
Ambrose and Silas Meadowcroft were charged with the murder of John Jago (by means of the stick or by use of some other weapon), and with the deliberate destruction of the body by throwing it into the quicklime.
In proof of this latter assertion, the knife which the deceased habitually carried about him, and the metal buttons which were known to belong to his coat, were produced.

It was argued that these indestructible substances, and some fragments of the larger bones had alone escaped the action of the burning lime.

Having produced medical witnesses to support this theory by declaring the bones to be human, and having thus circumstantially asserted the discovery of the remains in the kiln, the prosecution next proceeded to prove that the missing man had been murdered by the two brothers, and had been by them thrown into the quicklime as a means of concealing their guilt.
Witness after witness deposed to the inveterate enmity against the deceased displayed by Ambrose and Silas.

The threatening language they habitually used toward him; their violent quarrels with him, which had become a public scandal throughout the neighborhood, and which had ended (on one occasion at least) in a blow; the disgraceful scene which had taken place under my window; and the restoration to Ambrose, on the morning of the fatal quarrel, of the very stick which had been found among the remains of the dead man--these facts and events, and a host of minor circumstances besides, sworn to by witnesses whose credit was unimpeachable, pointed with terrible directness to the conclusion at which the prosecution had arrived.
I looked at the brothers as the weight of the evidence pressed more and more heavily against them.