A shout of execration burst from the auditory as these words were uttered, and every eye was turned to the spot where Hornby had been seated.  He had disappeared during the previous confusion.

“Silence!” exclaimed the judge sternly.  “Why, woman,” he added, “have you never spoken of this before?”

“Because, my lord,” replied the witness with downcast looks, and in a low, broken voice—­“because I am a sinful, wicked creature.  When my master, the day after Mr. Burton had been taken up, discovered that I knew his secret, he bribed me with money and great promises of more to silence.  I had been nearly all my life, gentlemen, poor and miserable, almost an outcast, and the temptation was too strong for me.  He mistrusted me, however—­for my mind, he saw, was sore troubled—­and he sent me off to London yesterday, to be out of the way till all was over.  The coach stopped at Leeds, and, as it was heavy upon me, I thought, especially as it was the blessed Easter-time, that I would step to the chapel.  His holy name be praised that I did!  The scales seemed to fall from my eyes, and I saw clearer than I had before the terrible wickedness I was committing.  I told all to the priest, and he has brought me here to make what amends I can for the sin and cruelty of which I have been guilty.  There—­there is all that is left of the wages of crime,” she added, throwing a purse of money on the floor of the court; and then bursting into a flood of tears, she exclaimed with passionate earnestness, “for which may the Almighty of his infinite mercy pardon and absolve me!”

“Amen!” responded the deep husky voice of the prisoner, snatched back, as it were, from the very verge of the grave to liberty and life.  “Amen, with all my soul!”

The counsel for the crown, cross-examined the witness, but his efforts only brought out her evidence in, if possible, a still clearer and more trustworthy light.  Not a thought of doubt was entertained by any person in the court, and the jury, with the alacrity of men relieved of a grievous burthen, and without troubling the judge to resume his interrupted charge, returned a verdict of acquittal.

The return of Burton to his home figured as an ovation in the Pool and Otley annals.  The greetings which met him on all sides were boisterous and hearty, as English greetings usually are; and it was with some difficulty the rustic constabulary could muster a sufficient force to save Hornby’s domicile from sack and destruction.  All the windows were, however, smashed, and that the mob felt was something at all events.

Burton profited by the painful ordeal to which he had, primarily through his own thoughtlessness, been exposed, and came in a few years to be regarded as one of the most prosperous yeomen-farmers of Yorkshire.  Mr. Frank Symonds’ union with Elizabeth Burton was in due time solemnized; Mr. Wilberforce, the then popular member for the West Riding, I remember hearing, stood sponsor to their eldest born; and Mary McGrath passed the remainder of her life in the service of the family her testimony had saved from disgrace and ruin.