ined for her defense when she was tried at the Old Bailey; and
her sentence was lenient, and her history and conduct proved that it was
right." How much he felt the little incident, at the actual time of its
occurrence, may be judged from the few lines written to me next morning:
"Whether it was the poor baby, or its poor mother, or the coffin, or my
fellow-jurymen, or what not, I can't say, but last night I had a most
violent attack of sickness and indigestion, which not only prevented me
from sleeping, but even from lying down. Accordingly Kate and I sat up
through the dreary watches."

The day of the first publication of _Master Humphrey_ (Saturday, 4th
April) had by this time come, and, according to the rule observed in his
two other great ventures, he left town with Mrs. Dickens on Friday, the
3d. With Maclise we had been together at Richmond the previous night;
and I joined him at Birmingham the day following with news of the sale
of the whole sixty thousand copies to which the first working had been
limited, and of orders already in hand for ten thousand more! The
excitement of the success somewhat lengthened our holiday; and, after
visiting Shakspeare's house at Stratford and Johnson's at Lichfield, we
found our resources so straitened in returning, that, employing as our
messenger of need his younger brother Alfred, who had joined us from
Tamworth, where he was a student-engineer, we had to pawn our gold
watches at Birmingham.

At the end of the following month he went to Broadstairs, and not many
days before (on the 20th of May) a note from Mr. Jordan on behalf of Mr.
Bentley opened the negotiations formerly referred to,[31] which
transferred to Messrs. Chapman & Hall the agreement for _Barnaby Rudge_.
I was myself absent when he left, and in a letter announcing his
departure he had written, "I don't know of a word of news in all London,
but there will be plenty next week, for I am going away, and I hope
you'll send me an account of it. I am doubtful whether it will be a
murder, a fire, a vast robbery, or the escape of Gould, but it will be
something remarkable no doubt. I almost blame myself for the death of
that poor girl who leaped off the monument upon my leaving town last
year. She would not have done it if I had remained, neither would the
two men have found the skeleton in the sewers." His prediction was quite
accurate, for I had to tell him, after not many days, of the potboy who
shot at the queen. "I