ded, pushing back her hair, and pressing her hands against
her hot temples, "can this be? What can it mean?"

A movement amongst the bystanders just at this moment attracted
the notice of the judge, and he immediately exclaimed, "The
defendant must not leave the court!" An officer placed himself
beside the wretched murderer as well as forger, and I resumed the
cross-examination of the witness.

"Now, Mrs. Tucker, please to look at this letter." (It was that which had
been addressed to Mary Woodley by her son.) "That, I believe, is your
son's handwriting?"

"Yes."

"The body of this will has been written by the same hand. Now, woman,
answer. Was it your son--this young man who, you perceive, if guilty,
cannot escape from justice--was it he who forged the names of the
deceased Mrs. Thorndyke, and of John Cummins attached to it?"

"Not he--not he!" shrieked the wretched woman. "It was
Thorndyke--Thorndyke himself." And then with a sudden revulsion of
feeling, as the consequences of what she had uttered flashed upon her,
she exclaimed, "Oh, Silas, what have I said?--what have I done?"

"Hanged me, that's all, you accursed devil!" replied Thorndyke with
gloomy ferocity. "But I deserve it for trusting in such an idiot: dolt
and fool that I was for doing so."

The woman sank down in strong convulsions, and was, by direction of the
judge, carried out of the hall.

The anxious silence which pervaded the court during this scene, in which
the reader will have observed I played a bold, tentative, and
happily-successful game, was broken as the witness was borne off by a
loud murmur of indignation, followed by congratulatory exclamations on
the fortunate termination of the suit. The defendant's counsel threw up
their briefs, and a verdict was at once returned for the plaintiff.

All the inculpated parties were speedily in custody; and the body of Mrs.
Thorndyke having been disinterred, it was discovered that she had been
destroyed by bichloride of mercury, of which a considerable quantity was
detected in the body. I was not present at the trial of Thorndyke and his
accomplices--he for murder, and Headley for perjury--but I saw by the
public prints that he was found guilty, and executed: Headley was
transported: the woman was, if I remember rightly, admitted evidence for
the crown.

Mary Woodley was of course put into immediate possession of her paternal
inheritance; and is now--at least she was about four months ago, when