Explore "The Trail of the Serpent" by Mary Elizabeth Braddon on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
THERE had not been since the last general election, when George Augustus Slashington, the Liberal member, had been returned against strong Conservative opposition, in a blaze of triumph and a shower of rotten eggs and cabbage-stumps -- there had not been since that great day such excitement in Slopperton as there was on the discovery of the murder of Mr. Montague Harding.
A murder was always a great thing for Slopperton. When John Boggins, weaver, beat out the brains of Sarah his wife, first with the heel of his clog and ultimately with a poker, Slopperton had a great deal to say about it -- though, of course, the slaughter of one "hand" by another was no great thing out of the factories. But this murder at the Black Mill was something out of the common. Uncommonly cruel, cowardly, and unmanly, and moreover occurring in a respectable rank of life.