I tasted no dinner that day:  I was sick at heart; for I felt as if the blood of two fellow-creatures was on my hands.  In the evening I sallied forth to the judge’s lodgings.  He listened to all I had to say; but was quite imperturbable.  The obstinate old man was satisfied that the sentence was as it should be.  I returned to my inn in a fever of despair.  Without the approval of the judge, I knew that an application to the Secretary of State was futile.  There was not even time to send to London, unless the judge had granted a respite.

All Saturday and Sunday I was in misery.  I denounced capital punishment as a gross iniquity—­a national sin and disgrace; my feelings of course being influenced somewhat by a recollection of that unhappy affair of Harvey, noticed in my previous paper.  I half resolved to give up the bar, and rather go and sweep the streets for a livelihood, than run the risk of getting poor people hanged who did not deserve it.

On the Monday morning I was pacing up and down my break fast-room in the next assize town, in a state of great excitement, when a chaise-and-four drove rapidly up to the hotel, and out tumbled Johnson the constable.  His tale was soon told.  On the previous evening, the landlady of the Black Swan, a roadside public-house about four miles distant from the scene of the murder, reading the name of Pearce in the report of the trial in the Sunday county paper, sent for Johnston to state that that person had on the fatal evening called and left a portmanteau in her charge, promising to call for it in an hour, but had never been there since.  On opening the portmanteau, Wilson’s watch, chains, and seals, and other property, were discovered in it; and Johnson had, as soon as it was possible, set off in search of me.  Instantly, for there was not a moment to spare, I, in company with Armstrong’s counsel, sought the judge, and with some difficulty obtained from him a formal order to the sheriff to suspend the execution till further orders.  Off I and the constable started, and happily arrived in time to stay the execution, and deprive the already-assembled mob of the brutal exhibition they so anxiously awaited.  On inquiring for Mary Strugnell, we found that she had absconded on the evening of the trial.  All search for her proved vain.

Five months had passed away; the fate of Armstrong and his wife was still undecided, when a message was brought to my chambers in the Temple from a woman said to be dying in St. Bartholomew’s Hospital.  It was Mary Strugnell; who, when in a state of intoxication, had fallen down in front of a carriage, as she was crossing near Holborn Hill, and had both her legs broken.  She was dying miserably, and had sent for me to make a full confession relative to Wilson’s murder.  Armstrong’s account was perfectly correct.  The deed was committed by Pearce, and they were packing up their plunder when they were startled by the unexpected return of the Armstrongs.