articles of small amount, and
another ten-pound note found in her pocket! All that has, I must say, a
very ugly look."

"I don't care," exclaimed Mrs. Davies quite fiercely, "if it looks as
ugly as sin, or if the whole Bank of England was found in her pocket! I
know Jane Eccles well; she nursed me last spring through the fever; and I
would be upon my oath that the whole story, from beginning to end, is an
invention of the devil, or something worse."

"Jane Eccles," I persisted, "appears to have been unable or unwilling to
give the slightest explanation as to how she became possessed of the
spurious notes. Who is this brother of hers, 'of such highly respectable
appearance,' according to the report, who was permitted a private
interview with her previous to the examination?"

"She has no brother that I have ever heard of," said Mrs. Davies. "It
must be a mistake of the papers."

"That is not likely. You observed of course that she was fully
committed--and no wonder!"

Mrs. Davies's faith in the young woman's integrity was not to be shaken
by any evidence save that of her own bodily eyes, and I agreed to see
Jane Eccles on the morrow, and make the best arrangements for the
defence--at Mrs. Davies' charge--which the circumstances and the short
time I should have for preparation--the Old Bailey session would be on in
a few days--permitted. The matter so far settled, Mrs. Margaret hurried
off to see what had become of little Henry, the prisoner's nephew.

I visited Jane Eccles the next day in Newgate. She was a well-grown young
woman of about two or three-and-twenty--not exactly pretty perhaps, but
very well-looking. Her brown hair was plainly worn, without a cap, and
the expression of her face was, I thought, one of sweetness and humility,
contradicted in some degree by rather harsh lines about the mouth,
denoting strong will and purpose. As a proof of the existence of this
last characteristic, I may here mention that, when her first overweening
confidence had yielded to doubt, she, although dotingly fond of her
nephew, at this time about eight years of age, firmly refused to see him,
"in order," she once said to me--and the thought brought a deadly pallor
to her face--in order that, should the worst befall, her memory might
not be involuntarily connected in his mind with images of dungeons, and
disgrace, and shame. Jane Eccles had received what is called in the
country, "a good schooling," and the books Mrs. Davies