I  would  have  compelled  these  culprits  to  expose
their  guilt,  but  support  failed  me  where  I  had  most
right  to  expect  aid  and  encouragement,  And  I  was
267


MARK     TWAIN

confronted  by  a  law  made  in  the  interest  of  crime,
which  protects  the  criminal  from  testifying  against
himself.  Yet  I  had  precedents  of  my  own  whereby
I  had  set  aside  that  law  on  two  different  occasions
and  thus  succeeded  in  convicting  criminals  to  whose
crimes  there  were  no  witnesses  but  themselves.
What  have  you  accomplished  this  day?  Do  you
realize  it?  You  have  set  adrift,  unadmonished,  in
this  community,  two  men  endowed  with  an  awful
and  mysterious  gift,  a  hidden  and  grisly  power  for
evil — a  power  by  which  each  in  his  turn  may  com-
mit crime  after  crime  of  the  most  heinous  character,
and  no  man  be  able  to  tell  which  is  the  guilty  or
which  the  innocent  party  in  any  case  of  them  all.
