On revisiting the office, a fragment of a letter written by Jane Eccles a few hours previous to her death, and evidently addressed to Mrs. Davies, was placed by Mr. Flint, who had by this time returned, before me.  The following is an exact copy of it, with the exception that the intervals which I have marked with dots,.... were filled with erasures and blots, and that every word seemed to have been traced by a hand smitten with palsy:—­

“From my Death-place, Midnight.

“Dear Madam—­No, beloved friend—­mother, let me call you....  Oh kind, gentle mother, I am to die ... to be killed in a few hours by cruel men!—­I, so young, so unprepared for death, and yet guiltless!  Oh never doubt that I am guiltless of the offence for which they will have the heart to hang me....  Nobody, they say, can save me now; yet if I could see the lawyer....  I have been deceived, cruelly deceived, madam—­buoyed up by lying hopes, till just now the thunder burst, and I—­oh God!....  As they spoke, the fearful chapter in the Testament came bodily before me—­the rending of the vail in twain, the terrible darkness, and the opened graves!....  I did not write for this, but my brain aches and dazzles....  It is too late—­too late, they all tell me! ...  Ah, if these dreadful laws were not so swift, I might yet—­but no; he clearly proved to me how useless....  I must not think of that....  It is of my nephew, of your Henry, child of my affections, that I would speak.  Oh, would that I....  But hark!—­they are coming....  The day has dawned ... to me the day of judgment!....”

This incoherent scrawl only confirmed my previous suspicions, but it was useless to dwell further on the melancholy subject.  The great axe had fallen, and whether justly or unjustly, would, I feared, as in many, very many other cases, never be clearly ascertained in this world.  I was mistaken.  Another case of “uttering forged Bank-of-England notes, knowing them to be forged,” which came under our cognizance a few months afterwards, revived the fading memory of Jane Eccles’s early doom, and cleared up every obscurity connected with it.

The offender in this new case, was a tall, dark-complexioned, handsome man, of about thirty years of age, of the name of Justin Arnold.  His lady mother, whose real name I shall conceal under that of Barton, retained us for her son’s defence, and from her, and other sources, we learned the following particulars:—­

Justin Arnold was the lady’s son by a former marriage.  Mrs. Barton, a still splendid woman, had, in second nuptials, espoused a very wealthy person, and from time to time had covertly supplied Justin Arnold’s extravagance.  This, however, from the wild course the young man pursued, could not be forever continued, and after many warnings the supplies were stopped.  Incapable of reformation, Justin Arnold, in order to obtain the means of dissipation, connected himself with a cleverly-organized band of swindlers and forgers, who so adroitly managed their nefarious business, that, till his capture, they had contrived to keep themselves clear of the law—­the inferior tools and dupes having been alone caught in its fatal meshes.  The defence, under these circumstances necessarily a difficult, almost impossible one, was undertaken by Mr. Flint, and conducted by him with his accustomed skill and energy.