ury, who had desperately come to see the
trial, and know the worst, sobbed with such prominent vehemence, that I
believe him, to this day, to have greatly influenced the verdict. I
was strongly recommended to mercy and got off with fourteen years'
transportation. The unfortunate Mill, who was tried after me, with a
mere dry-eyed barrister to defend him, was hanged.

POSTSCRIPT.

WITH the record of my sentence of transportation, my life as a Rogue
ends, and my existence as a respectable man begins. I am sorry to say
anything which may disturb popular delusions on the subject of poetical
justice, but this is strictly the truth.

My first anxiety was about my wife's future.

Mr. Batterbury gave me no chance of asking his advice after the trial.
The moment sentence had been pronounced, he allowed himself to be helped
out of court in a melancholy state of prostration, and the next morning
he left for London. I suspect he was afraid to face me, and nervously
impatient, besides, to tell Annabella that he had saved the legacy
again by another alarming sacrifice. My father and mother, to whom I had
written on the subject of Alicia, were no more to be depended on than
Mr. Batterbury. My father, in answering my letter, told me that he
conscientiously believed he had done enough in forgiving me for throwing
away an excellent education, and disgracing a respectable name. He added
that he had not allowed my letter for my mother to reach her, out
of pitying regard for her broken health and spirits; and he ended by
telling me (what was perhaps very true) that the wife of such a son as
I had been, had no claim upon her father-in-law's protection and help.
There was an end, then, of any hope of finding resources for Alicia
among the members of my own family.

The next thing was to discover a means of providing for her without
assistance. I had formed a project for this, after meditating over my
conversations with the returned transport in Barkingham jail, and I had
taken a reliable opinion on the chances of successfully executing my
design from the solicitor who had prepared my defense.

Alicia herself was so earnestly in favor of assisting in my experiment,
that she declared she would prefer death to its abandonment.
Accordingly, the necessary preliminaries were arranged; and, when we
parted, it was some mitigation of our grief to know that there was a
time appointed for meeting again. Alicia was to lodge with a distant
relative