her to restore the lace she had stolen.
Transfixed with shame and terror, she stood rooted to the spot, and the
lace fell on the floor.

"Fetch an officer," said the harsh voice, addressing one of the shopmen.

"No--no--no!" screamed the wretched woman, falling on her knees in wild
supplication. "For my child's sake--in mercy of the innocent babe as yet
unborn--pity and forgive me!"

The harsh order was iterated; and Esther Mason, fainting with shame and
agony, was conveyed to the prison in Giltspur Street. The next day she
was fully committed to Newgate on the capital charge of privately
stealing in a shop to the value of five pounds. A few hours after her
incarceration within those terrible walls, she was prematurely delivered
of a female child.

I have no moral doubt whatever, I never have had, that at the time of the
committal of the felonious act, the intellect of Esther Mason was
disordered. Any other supposition is inconsistent with the whole tenor
of her previous life and character "Lead us not into temptation" is
indeed the holiest, because the humblest prayer.

Three weeks had elapsed before the first intimation of these events
reached me, in a note from the chaplain of Newgate, an excellent,
kind-hearted man, to whom Mrs. Mason had confided her sad story. I
immediately hastened to the prison; and in a long interview with her,
elicited the foregoing statement. I readily assured her that all which
legal skill could do to extricate her from the awful position in which
she stood, the gravity of which I did not affect to conceal, should be
done. The offence with which she was charged had supplied the scaffold
with numberless victims; and tradesmen were more than ever clamorous for
the stern execution of a law which, spite of experience, they still
regarded as the only safeguard of their property. My wife was overwhelmed
with grief; and in her anxiety to save her unhappy foster-sister, sought,
without my knowledge, an interview with the prosecutor, in the hope of
inducing him not to press the charge. Her efforts were unavailing. He had
suffered much, he said, from such practices, and was "upon principle"
determined to make an example of every offender he could catch. As to the
plea that the husband had been forcibly carried off by a pressgang, it
was absurd; for what would become of the property of tradesmen if the
wife of every sailor so entrapped were to be allowed to plunder shops
with impunity? This magni