operly registered, of my
Agnes--of her whose very name had always sounded to my ears like the very
echo of mountain innocence, purity, and pastoral simplicity. Here in another
column stood the name and residence of her accuser. I shall call him
_Barratt_, for that was amongst his names, and a name by which he had at one
period of his infamous life been known to the public, though not his
principal name, or the one which he had thought fit to assume at this era.
James Barratt, then, as I shall here call him, was a haberdasher--keeping a
large and conspicuous shop in a very crowded and what was then considered a
fashionable part of the city. The charge was plain and short. Did I live to
read it? It accused Agnes M---- of having on that morning secreted in her
muff, and feloniously carried away, a valuable piece of Mechlin lace, the
property of James Barratt. And the result of the first examination was thus
communicated in a separate column, written in red ink--'Remanded to the
second day after to-morrow for final examination.' Everything in this
sin-polluted register was in manuscript; but at night the records of each
day were regularly transferred to a printed journal, enlarged by comments
and explanatory descriptions from some one of the clerks, whose province it
was to furnish this intelligence to the public journals. On that same night,
therefore, would go forth to the world such an account of the case, and such
a description of my wife's person, as would inevitably summon to the next
exhibition of her misery, as by special invitation and advertisement, the
whole world of this vast metropolis--the idle, the curious, the brutal, the
hardened amateur in spectacles of wo, and the benign philanthropist who
frequents such scenes with the purpose of carrying alleviation to their
afflictions. All alike, whatever might be their motives or the spirit of
their actions, would rush (as to some grand festival of curiosity and
sentimental luxury) to this public martyrdom of my innocent wife.

Meantime, what was the first thing to be done? Manifestly, to see Agnes:
her account of the affair might suggest the steps to be taken. Prudence,
therefore, at any rate, prescribed this course; and my heart would not have
tolerated any other. I applied, therefore, at once, for information as to
the proper mode of effecting this purpose without delay. What was my horror
at learning that, by a recent regulation of all the police offices, under
the