nfined was about six feet long and four wide; the walls were
scored all over with fantastic designs, snatches of poetry, short
sentences and names,--the work of its former occupants, and of its
present inmate.

When Jack entered the cell, she was talking to herself in the muttering
unconnected way peculiar to her distracted condition; but, after her eye
had rested on him some time, the fixed expression of her features
relaxed, and a smile crossed them. This smile was more harrowing even
than her former rigid look.

"You are an angel," she cried, with a look beaming with delight.

"Rather a devil," groaned her son, "to have done this."

"You are an angel, I say," continued the poor maniac; "and my Jack would
have been like you, if he had lived. But he died when he was a
child--long ago--long ago--long ago."

"Would he had done so!" cried Jack.

"Old Van told me if he grew up he would be hanged. He showed me a black
mark under his ear, where the noose would be tied. And so I'll tell you
what I did--"

And she burst into a laugh that froze Jack's blood in his veins.

"What did you do?" he asked, in a broken voice.

"I strangled him--ha! ha! ha!--strangled him while he was at my
breast--ha! ha!"--And then with a sudden and fearful change of look, she
added, "That's what has driven me mad, I killed my child to save him
from the gallows--oh! oh! One man hanged in a family is enough. If I'd
not gone mad, they would have hanged me."

"Poor soul!" ejaculated her son.

"I'll tell you a dream I had last night," continued the unfortunate
being. "I was at Tyburn. There was a gallows erected, and a great mob
round it--thousands of people, and all with white faces like corpses. In
the midst of them there was a cart with a man in it--and that man was
Jack--my son Jack--they were going to hang him. And opposite to him,
with a book in his hand,--but it couldn't be a prayer-book,--sat
Jonathan Wild, in a parson's cassock and band. I knew him in spite of
his dress. And when they came to the gallows, Jack leaped out of the
cart, and the hangman tied up Jonathan instead--ha! ha! How the mob
shouted and huzzaed--and I shouted too--ha! ha! ha!"

"Mother!" cried Jack, unable to endure this agonizing scene longer.
"Don't you know me, mother?"

"Ah!" shrieked Mrs. Sheppard. "What's that?--Jack's voice!"

"It is," replied her son.

"The ceiling is breaking! the floor is opening! he is coming to me!"
cried the unhappy woman.

"