He
may add that Darcy, the ex-convict, is an inert and lifeless creature,
married to a paroled woman as lifeless as himself.
Darcy's friends in Union City would not have it appear that their model
citizen was a murderer. They protested stoutly, and in the end the
tax-payers for thirty years were burdened with the care and keep of the
criminal.
As it has already been remarked, murders in Nevada County were common
enough; but a murder trial was almost unheard of.
The State tried Collins first. He had no friends, except of the baser
sort; and his conviction might make it easier to convict Darcy. Mat
Bailey and Mamie Slocum were important witnesses for the State; and
Collins himself, poor debauchee though he was, was man enough to clear
Mamie of all suspicion. She freely told of her conversation with him
when he had recommended the gallantry of gentlemen of the road. And she
admitted that she had always been haunted by the suspicion that the
highwayman with whom Cummins had grappled might have been Collins, who
had so strangely disappeared after the robbery. No; she could not
identify him as the man who asked about Cummins' valise.
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