ewing the harangue of Armstrong as a
mere tissue of falsehood, he cooly pronounced sentence of death on the
prisoners. They were to be hanged on Monday. This was Friday.

"A bad job!" whispered the counsel for the defence as he passed me. "That
witness of yours, the woman Strugnell, is the real culprit."

I tasted no dinner that day: I was sick at heart; for I felt as if the
blood of two fellow-creatures was on my hands. In the evening I sallied
forth to the judge's lodgings. He listened to all I had to say; but was
quite imperturbable. The obstinate old man was satisfied that the
sentence was as it should be. I returned to my inn in a fever of despair.
Without the approval of the judge, I knew that an application to the
Secretary of State was futile. There was not even time to send to London,
unless the judge had granted a respite.

All Saturday and Sunday I was in misery. I denounced capital punishment
as a gross iniquity--a national sin and disgrace; my feelings of course
being influenced somewhat by a recollection of that unhappy affair of
Harvey, noticed in my previous paper. I half resolved to give up the bar,
and rather go and sweep the streets for a livelihood, than run the risk
of getting poor people hanged who did not deserve it.

On the Monday morning I was pacing up and down my break fast-room in the
next assize town, in a state of great excitement, when a chaise-and-four
drove rapidly up to the hotel, and out tumbled Johnson the constable. His
tale was soon told. On the previous evening, the landlady of the Black
Swan, a roadside public-house about four miles distant from the scene of
the murder, reading the name of Pearce in the report of the trial in the
Sunday county paper, sent for Johnston to state that that person had on
the fatal evening called and left a portmanteau in her charge, promising
to call for it in an hour, but had never been there since. On opening the
portmanteau, Wilson's watch, chains, and seals, and other property, were
discovered in it; and Johnson had, as soon as it was possible, set off in
search of me. Instantly, for there was not a moment to spare, I, in
company with Armstrong's counsel, sought the judge, and with some
difficulty obtained from him a formal order to the sheriff to suspend the
execution till further orders. Off I and the constable started, and
happily arrived in time to stay the execution, and deprive the
already-assembled mob of the brutal exhibition they so anx