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The defendant was convicted of the crime of murder of the second degree. This appeal is from the judgment of conviction and the order denying a new trial.

For more than a year prior to the homicide the defendant and Mrs. Pearl Connell, who was of the age of about forty years, jointly conducted a hotel at Cedarville, Modoc County. Apparently he was a widower and she a widow. Mrs. Connell disappeared during the evening of July 6, 1926, and two days later her body was found in an old cellar in the town. This cellar was a mere excavation, partly covered with a board roof and without any wall at one end thereof, that end being entirely open. An autopsy showed that she had been severely beaten about the head and face and that her death was caused by strangulation, her windpipe being crushed, evidently by the grip of some person’s fingers on her throat and neck.

The evidence tending to connect the defendant with the commission of the crime is entirely circumstantial. There is substantial evidence that he desired to purchase Mrs. Connell’s interest in the business, but was unable to raise sufficient money to do so; that the parties engaged in frequent bitter quarrels; that in May or…