CHAPTER XII.
The Confession of Newton Edwards--The foul Plot fully Explained--Eugene Pearson's Guilt clearly Proven--A Story of Temptation and Crime.
The confession of Newton Edwards revealed a history of undiscovered crime that had been carried on for years.

Beginning at first in wild and extravagant conduct, which consumed the liberal salary which he received, and then led to the incurring of debts which became pressing and impossible of payment by legitimate means; then followed a thirst for gambling, in which large returns were promised for small investments, and failing in this, came the temptation to crime and his consequent ruin.
How certain it is, that once the downward step is taken, the rest follows swiftly and inevitably, and ruin and disgrace tread swiftly and surely upon the heels of folly and crime.

Newton Edwards began life under the brightest aspects.

Of respectable parentage, he had enjoyed the benefits of a liberal education, and his first essay in business had been both fortunate and profitable.

Beloved by his family, and admired by a numerous circle of friends, he deliberately gave himself up to a life of excess and dissipation, and the end was soon to be a dark and gloomy prison.
I will, however, leave him to tell his own story, and the moral of it is so plain that he who runs may read.