d,
who was never weary of doing him kindnesses. Having repeated these often
and for a long time together, Kelley at last began to call the old man
father, and there seemed to be an inviolable friendship between them,
Peter always preserving some respect towards him, though he seemed to
have lost it towards everybody else.

One night, however, or rather morning, for it was near two o'clock,
Kelley came with many signs of terror and confusion to the watch-house,
and there told the constable and attendants that old Nisbet was
murdered and lay weltering in his bed and a razor by him. The watch,
knowing Peter to be a wild, half-witted drunken fellow, gave little heed
to his discourse, and so far they were from crediting it that they
turned him out of the watch-house, and bid him get about his business.
In the morning old Nisbet's lodgers not hearing him stir at his usual
hour, went to the door, and there made a noise in order to awake him.
Having no answer upon that, they sent for a proper officer and broke the
door open, where they found the old man with his throat cut in a most
barbarous fashion, overflowed with the torrent of his own blood, which
was yet warm. No sooner did the particulars of this horrid murder begin
to make a noise, but the watch calling to mind what Kelley had told
them, immediately suspected him for the murder, and caused him quickly
to be apprehended and committed to Newgate.

On the trial the strongest circumstances imaginable appeared against
him, so much that the jury, without much hesitation, found him guilty,
and he, after a pathetic speech from the Bench, of the nature and
circumstances of his bloody crime, received sentence of death with the
rest. Under conviction he appeared a very stupid creature, though as far
as his capacity would give him leave he showed all imaginable signs of
penitence and sorrow, and attended with great gravity and devotion at
the public service in the chapel, notwithstanding he professed himself
to be in the communion of the Church of Rome. He acknowledged the
deceased Mr. Nisbet to have been extraordinarily kind and charitable to
him, even to as great a degree as if he had been his own child, but as
to the murder, he flatly denied his committing it, or his having any
knowledge of its being committed; and though he was strongly pressed as
to the nature of those circumstances on which the jury had found him
guilty, and which were so strong as to persuade all mankind th