lady was alarmed for the safety of her protegée, and, with a liberal price, bought off the father's natural desire. He duly gave a receipt for the sum thus paid him, and engaged to see the child no more. The next morning he stole the girl from the labourer's cottage. He was seen loitering about the hut before day-break, and the shrieks of the victim were heard plainly at a considerable distance from the spot where he had first seized her. Constables were dispatched to his den. It was shut up, and, being forced open, was found deserted, and stripped of every thing. He was hunted over the county, but not discovered. He had retired to haunts which baffled the detective skill of the most experienced and alert. This is the first act of the tragedy. It will be necessary to stain these pages by a description of the last. The child became more and more unhappy under the roof of her persecutors, as they soon proved themselves to be. She was taught to beg and to steal, and was taken into the highways by her mother, who watched near her, whilst, with streaming eyes, the unhappy creature now lied for alms, now pilfered from the village. Constant tramping, ill treatment, and the wear and tear of spirit which the new mode of existence effected, soon reduced the child to its former state of ill health and helplessness. She pined, and with her sickness came want and hunger to the hut. The father, affecting to disbelieve, and not listening to the sad creature's complaint, still dismissed her abroad, and when she could not walk, compelled the mother to carry her to the public road, and there to leave her in her agony, the more effectually to secure the sympathy of passengers. Even this opportunity was not long afforded him. The child grew weaker, and was at length unable to move. He plied her with menaces and oaths, and, last of all, deliberately threatened to murder her, if she did not rise and procure bread for all of them. She had, alas! no longer power to comply with his request, and—merciful Heaven!—the fiend, in a moment of unbridled passion, made good his fearful promise. With one blow of a hatchet—alas! it needed not a hard one—he destroyed her. I caught the judge's eye as this announcement was made. It quivered, and his countenance was pale. I wished to see the monster too, but my heart failed me, and my blood boiled with indignation, and I could not turn to him. The short account which I have given here does bare justice to the evidence which came thick and full against the prisoner, leaving upon the minds of none the remotest doubt of his fearful criminality. The mother, and a beggar who had passed the night in the hut when the murder was perpetrated, were the principal witnesses against the infanticide, and their depositions could not be shaken. I waited with anxiety and great irritability for the sentence which should remove the prisoner from the bar. The earth seemed polluted as long as he breathed upon it; he could not be too quickly withdrawn, and hidden for ever in the grave. The case for the prosecution being closed, a young barrister arose, and there was a perfect stillness in the court. My curiosity to know what this gentleman could possibly urge on behalf of his client was extreme. To me "the probation bore no hinge, nor loop to ban a doubt on." But the smoothfaced counsellor, whose modesty had no reference to his years, seemed in no way burdened by the weight of his responsibility, nor to view his position as one of difficulty and risk. He stood, cool and erect, in the silence of the assembly, and with a self-satisfied smile he proceeded to address the judge. Yes, he laughed, and he had heard that heart-breaking recital; and the life of the man for whom he pleaded was hardly worth a pin's fee. The words of the poet rushed involuntarily to my mind. "Heaven!" I mentally exclaimed, "Has this fellow no feeling of his business—he sings at grave-making!" He made no allusion to the evidence which had been adduced, but he spoke of INFORMALITY. I trembled with alarm and anger. I had often heard and read of justice defeated by such a trick of trade; but I prayed that such dishonour and public shame might not await her now. Informality! Surely we had heard of the cold-blooded cruelty, the slow and exquisite torture, the final deathblow; there was no informality in these; the man had not denied his guilt, his defender did not seek to palliate it. Away with the juggle, it cannot avail you here! But in spite of my feverish security, the shrewd lawyer—well might he smile and chuckle at his skill—proceeded calmly to assert the prisoner's right to his immediate discharge! There was a flaw in the declaration, and the indictment was invalid. And thus he proved it. The man was charged with murdering his child—described as his, and bearing his own name. Now, the deceased was illegitimate, and should have borne its mother's name. He appealed to his lordship on the bench, and demanded for his client the benefit which law allowed him. You might have heard the faintest whisper in the court, so suspended and so kept back was every drop of human breath, whilst every eye was fixed upon the judge. The latter spoke. "The exception was conclusive; the prisoner must be discharged." I could not conceive it possible. What were truth, equity, morality—Nothing? And was murder innocence, if a quibble made it so? The jailer approached the monster, and whispered into his ear that he was now at liberty. He held down his head stupidly to receive the words, and he drew it back again, incredulous and astounded. Oh, what a secret he had learned for future government and conduct! What a friend and abettor, in his fight against mankind, had he found in the law of his land! I was maddened when I saw him depart from the well-secured bar in which he had been placed for trial. There he had looked the thing he was—a tiger caught, and fastened in his den. Could it do less than chill the blood, and make the heart grow sick and faint, to see the bolts drawn back—the monster loosed again, and turned unchained, untamed, fiercer than ever, into life again? Legislators, be merciful to humanity, and cease to embolden and incite these beasts of prey! Melancholy as the above recital is, it is to be considered rather as an episode in this narration, than as the proper subject of it. Had my morning's adventure finished with this disgraceful acquittal, the reader would not have been troubled with the perusal of these pages. My vexation would have been confined to my own breast, and I should have nourished my discontent in silence. The scene which immediately followed the dismissal of the murderer, is that to which I have chiefly to beg attention. It led to an acquaintance, for which I was unprepared—enabled me to do an act of charity, for which I shall ever thank God who gave me the power—and disclosed a character and a history to which the intelligent and kind-hearted may well afford the tribute of their sympathy. It was by way of contrast and relief, I presume, that the authorities had contrived that the next trial should hardly call upon the time and trouble of the court. It was a case, in fact, which ought to have been months before summarily disposed of by the committing magistrate, and one of those too frequently visited with undue severity, whilst offences of a deeper dye escape unpunished, or, worse still, are washed away in gold. A poor man had stolen from a baker's shop a loaf of bread. The clerk of the arraigns, as I believe he is called, involved this simple charge in many words, and took much time to state it but when he had finished his oration, I could discover nothing more or less than the bare fact. A few minutes before the appearance of the delinquent, I remarked a great bustle in the neighbourhood of the young barrister already spoken of. A stout fresh-coloured man had taken a seat behind him with two thinner men, his companions, and they were all in earnest conversation. The stout man was the prosecutor—his companions were his witnesses—and the youthful counsellor was, on this occasion, retained against the prisoner. I must confess that, for the moment, I had a fiendish delight in finding the legal gentleman in his present position. "It well becomes the man," thought I, "through whose instrumentality that monster has been set free, to fall with all his weight of eloquence and legal subtlety upon this poor criminal." If he smiled before, he was in earnest now. He frowned, and closed his lips with much solemnity, and every look bespoke the importance of the interests committed to his charge.—A beggar!—and to steal a loaf of bread! Ay, ay! society must be protected—our houses and our homes must be defended. Anarchy must be strangled in its birth. Such thoughts as these I read upon the brow of youthful wisdom. Ever and anon, a good point in the case struck forcibly the lusty prosecutor, who communicated it forthwith to his adviser. He listened most attentively, and shook his head, as who should say "Leave that to me—we have him on the hip." The witnesses grew busy in comparing notes, and nothing now was wanting but the great offender—the fly who must be crushed upon the wheel—and he appeared. Reader, you have seen many such. You have not lived in the crowded thoroughfares of an overgrown city, where every grade of poverty and wealth, of vice and virtue, meet the eye, mingling as they pass along—where splendid royalty is carried quicker than the clouds adown the road which palsied hunger scarce can cross for lack of strength—where lovely forms, and faces pure as angels' in their innocent expression, are met and tainted on the path by unwomanly immodesty and bare licentiousness—amongst such common sights you have not dwelt, and not observed some face pale and wasted from disease,
СКАЧАТЬ
