The banker retired, baffled, and threatening vengeance.  A consultation was held, and it was finally determined to arrest Sparks and commit him to prison, in the hope that, by shutting him up, and separating him from his family and accomplices, he would be less upon his guard against the collection of evidence necessary to a conviction, and perhaps be frightened into terms, or induced to make a full confession.  This was a severe blow to his family.  The privations forced upon them by the want of the locksmith’s earnings were borne without a murmur—­and out of the little that could be mustered, a portion was always reserved to buy some trifling but unexpected comfort or luxury to carry to the prisoner.

Some months having passed without Sparks having made any confession, or the discovery of any new fact whereby his guilt might be established, his prosecutors found themselves reluctantly compelled to bring him to trial.  They had not a tittle of evidence, except some strange locks and implements found in the shop, and which proved the talent, but not the guilt, of the mechanic.  But these were so various, and executed with such elaborate art, and such an evident expenditure of labour, that but few, even of the judges, jury, or spectators, could be persuaded that a man so poor would have devoted himself so sedulously to such an employment, unless he had had some other object in view than mere instruction or amusement.  His friends and neighbours gave him an excellent character; but on their cross-examination, all admitted his entire devotion to his favourite pursuit.  The counsel for the banker exerted himself with considerable ability.  Calculating in some degree on the state of the public mind, and upon the influence which vague rumours, coupled with the evidences of the mechanic’s handicraft exhibited in court, might have on the mind of the jury, he dwelt upon every ward and winding—­on the story of the iron chest—­on the evident poverty of the locksmith, and yet his apparent waste of time—­and asked if all this work were not intended to insure success in some vast design?  He believed that a verdict would be immediately followed by a confession, for he thought Amos guilty, and succeeded in making the belief pretty general among his audience.  Some of the jury were half inclined to speculate on the probabilities of a confession, and, swept away by the current of suspicion, were not indisposed to convict without evidence, in order that the result might do credit to their penetration; but this was impossible, even in an American court of justice, in the good old times of which we write.  Hanging persons on suspicion, and acquitting felons because the mob think murder no crime, are modern inventions.  The charge of the judge was clear and decisive.  He admitted that there were grounds of suspicion—­that there were circumstances connected with the prisoner’s peculiar mode of life that were not reconcilable with the lowness of his finances; but yet of direct testimony