Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/333

 FROM THE &quot;LONDON TIMES *

evidence against him was perfect in every detail, and absolutely unassailable. Clayton admitted this him self. He said that a reasonable man could not examine this testimony with a dispassionate mind and not be convinced by it; yet the man would be in error, nevertheless. Clayton swore that he did not commit the murder, and that he had had noth ing to do with it.

As your readers will remember, he was con demned to death. He had numerous and powerful friends, and they worked hard to save him, for none of them doubted the truth of his assertion. I did what little I could to help, for I had long since become a close friend of his, and thought I knew that it was not in his character to inveigle an enemy into he was several times reprieved by the governor; he was reprieved once more in the beginning of the present year, and the execution-day postponed to March 3ist.

The governor s situation has been embarrassing, from the day of the condemnation, because of the fact that Clayton s wife is the governor s niece. The marriage took place in 1899, when Clayton was thirty-four and the girl twenty-three, and has been a happy one. There is one child, a little girl three years old. Pity for the poor mother and child kept the mouths of grumblers closed at first ; but this could not last forever for in America politics has a hand in everything and by and by the governor s polit ical opponents began to call attention to his delay in allowing the law to take its course. These hints

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