could come-where the victim had no opportunity to make an outery, and no time to call upon his fellow men, nor on his God. That the wound was given by a deadly aim, producing instantaneous death. That all this was done in a peaceable community, in the open daytime, and on a public highway.

Had you been just informed, for the first time, gentlemen of the jury, of the perpetration of this deed, your first conclusion would be that such an act was not done in presence of a witness, but rather in the solitude, where no human vision and not the eye of God, if possible, could reach him. Crimes like this are always sought to be committed in secret. So in the case you have now been sworn to try, the nature of the crime, and the time and place and manner of its commission, forbid the possibility of fixing guilt upon the prisoner at the bar by the positive testimony of eyewitnesses to the deed. But, fortunately for us, the all-wise Disposer of events in his wisdom and his mercy has providentially provided that a brother's blood shall cry to the murderer from the ground. He has placed a monitor within our breasts that, like the blood of a murdered Abel, will continually cry out to us and betray our guilt, however hidden are our steps, however secret our machinations. This case is of that sort. Providence has afforded us the means by a train of circumstances singularly remarkable to fix upon the perpetrator of the deed. Some persons are prone to speak of circumstantial testimony as weak and insufficient. Deeper wisdom and reflection have taught a wiser lesson. Some of the wisest and best of reasoners and of thinkers-men skilled and learned in the law of evidencehave told us that a jury may rest upon a well-connected link of circumstantial testimony, with more certainty and safety than upon indifferent testimony of a positive character. A witness may be biased in his judgment, may be misled, may be corrupt, but a well connected train of circumstances, depending on the concurring testimony of many witnesses, cannot lie.

We expect to prove, gentlemen of the jury, that Lassiter was killed, and that he was shot while passing along a public turnpike road, in the county of Hyde. And that you may

better understand the case, we shall introduce an accurate survey of the roads and the surrounding localities. We shall be able to show you that previous to the perpetration of the crime the prisoner at the bar had a motive-that he was thinking about its commission. No man leaps headlong into crime at one bound. He approaches it by degrees; he nurses his revengeful feelings; he thinks about it until he corrupts his own heart and then he acts. We are prepared to show you that previous to the death of Lassiter, the prisoner at the bar had been talking about it, that he had made threats and that the deceased entertained fears that he should fall a victim to these threats. We shall show you that on Sunday, the 14th day of November, the deceased stayed all night at the house of one Dorset Mason, with whom he had been boarding. That he spoke of his intentions to go on the next day, up the turnpike road to Mattamuskeet Lake, to get a school, and expressed his fears of the prisoner, and spoke of getting some one to go with him. Then he left Mason's the next morning with his carpet bag and went to the house of Thomas Bridgman, a neighbor to Carawan, where he dined. After dinner he took his carpet bag and started on up the road, passing Carawan's house about 2 o'clock. Carawan was in the yard. and just before Lassiter appeared went into the house, which was a short distance only from the road and from which he had an unobstructed view of any and all who might be passing. Lassiter stopped at Thaddeus Brown's, who was plowing near the road, and talked with him. He went on a little further and stopped at the gate of Thomas Gibbs, some twelve or fifteen minutes, in conversation with him. passed on from there, along the road towards the lake, and was seen no more alive. We expect to prove that Lassiter was killed upon this road, while going to the lake. That Carawan was in his house a short time only after the deceased had passed; that he then left and went direct across his field and pasture to the woods on the back of his farm, and was shortly followed by his wife to the same point, with a double-barrelled gun concealed under her apron. The wife returned shortly to the house without the gun. Carawan disappeared in the

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woods, and is supposed to have hastened through the woods to a place beside the road where the murder was committed. Not a great while after Lassiter had gone on upon the road, Thomas Gibbs heard a gun fired in that direction at quite a distance. Carawan returned to his house at sundown, without his gun. The place was an appropriate one for the perpetration of such a crime, and one likely to be selected. In a few days the non-arrival of Lassiter at his appointment on the lake began to awaken attention. It was ascertained that he had gone that way on Monday. Suspicion began to be excited. His friends became alarmed. It was noised abroad that he had been murdered. Inquiries were set on foot in all directions and on Friday a general search was commenced on both sides of the turnpike road. It will be shown that while the inquiries were going on, the prisoner manifested great interest in the result of them and made efforts to divert these inquiries into a different channel, suggesting to one of his friends the probability that Lassiter had run away, and before this friend had heard that deceased was missing.

In one part of this transaction especially does the finger of providence seem evident. Lassiter's dead body had been carried off a long distance from the road, into a dense and almost impenetrable thicket, and there, beneath the mossy turf of a low bottom, so carefully, so wisely concealed, that it seemed impossible that any human search could ever discover its hiding place. The finger of an all-seeing and a divine providence alone pointed out the spot. Two men on Saturday afternoon, after a long and tedious search which they were about to abandon as hopeless, were led to this place; but how, no one can tell. No mound of newly upturned earth was there, no footprints to mark the spot, and the moss that carpeted the sunken place was smooth and level all alike. A few lumps of dirt, less than a handful in all, and a decaying limb of laurel that had been overturned, told the tale. There, these men found the body. Riddled with shot and bullets, and mangled; there it was, crammed into a hole upon its face, the elbows sticking up, and trampled upon and covered over with turf. The rest of the neighbors on the search were called in to the

place of burial, and the body was identified. It was that of the murdered Lassiter. You will ask yourselves the question, gentlemen of the jury: Did any one of all this crowd, or of all that region act like the guilty man? That inward monitor that not only warns us against the commission of crime, but betrays us when its warning voice is disregarded, caused the prisoner at the bar to proclaim by his conduct that he was the guilty man. Though he took no part in the search, yet he betrayed his interest during its progress, inquiring where and how far it had been made, and where next they proposed to look. And as soon as it was announced to him that the body was discovered he prepares à budget of clothes and flies; declaring as he goes, to his nephew and his servant, "Boys, I must go away or I shall be hung." And more than this, he knew that there was one whose evidence could convict him of the crime. That evidence he seeks to stifle with a bribe. He tells this witness, his own nephew, that if he will tell the people he was home all day on Monday he would give him the best negro that he had. Are circumstances such as these consistent with the prisoner's innocence? If not, although the duty be a painful one, you will be bound to find him guilty of the charge with which he stands accused. But there are other circumstances which point conclusively to his guilt. He returned to his home by stealth, at night, and surrendered himself to the officers of the law, only when he discovered that it was useless longer to hold out. And then, after his arrest, and during his imprisonment, we find him uneasy about the witness whom he had tried to purchase with a bribe, and making further efforts to hire him to leave, and in default of this, to employ others to get rid of him, "by hook or by crook." The State is frank to confess, gentlemen of the jury, that in this case they cannot ask at your hands a verdict of guilty against the prisoner except on circumstantial testimony. If you require better evidence than this, this criminal must go unpunished, and all crime must go unpunished which was perpetrated in secret. We shall show beyond a doubt that these circumstances cannot exist, and the prisoner be innocent of the charge alleged against him. You will

not be troubled with the degree of the crime, for it will not be denied that if the prisoner is guilty at all, he is guilty of murder. One single issue will be presented for your inquiry and your duty, though a painful one, is nevertheless a plain one; if these circumstances point to the prisoner beyond a doubt as the murderer of Clement H. Lassiter, then you will find him guilty; otherwise you will find him not guilty.

THE EVIDENCE FOR THE STATE.

Dr. Bryan H. Griffin. Am a practicing physician of Hyde County. Knew Clement H. Lassiter. On 21st Nov. last saw a portion of his body in a hole in a swamp, cut out just the size of the body below the surface of the earth; it presented an awful appearance, was pressed down into the hole very tight. The body was taken up and carried to the main road, where it was stripped. Recognized the features before it was taken out. Dr. Long and myself examined the wounds. He was shot on the right side, below the shoulder blade; there were 18 or 20 shot holes. A few shot penetrated the right arm; the shot were mixed-small, large and buck shot. One hole in the body appeared to have been made by a ball, or by several shot wrapped up together. Two shots penetrated the heart, and must have caused instant death; several passed through the liver, and the lungs were badly shot On the opposite side of the body was a wound which had the appearance of having been made by some blunt instrument. From my recollections of the appearance of the wounds, unconnected with any knowledge of the time Lassiter had been missed, should suppose the wounds had not been

made quite so long as the Monday previous, seven days. The body was firm, and the wounds recent; they had been given several days without doubt, but I can not say how long. When the body was taken up, there was a large concourse of people and great anxiety to see it.

Cross-examined. Saw body on Sunday afternoon, 21st November, after 12; deceased had on dark colored cloth clothes, and I think a coat; his pockets were examined, and a key and silver sixpence or shilling found. Only four shots were found and extracted; there were eighteen or twenty shot holes and of different sizes; one you could put your thumb in; others were small; there were three sizes of shots, besides the ball. At the time of the examination, my attention was not directed to the length of time death might have been inferred from the appearance of the wounds and condition of the body; from present recollection, should say some four or five days. The body was not much decomposed.

Το Mr. Stevenson. Some bodies decomposed more rapidly than others; a healthy body will last longer and loss of blood will tend to the preservation of the body. No physician could ar