“Oh, Aunt—­Aunt Quarles, don’t throttle me; I’ll tell all—­all; let go, let go!” and the wretched man slowly recovered, as Ben Burke said,

“Ay, my lord, ask him yourself, the little wretch can tell you all about it.”

“I submit, my lurd,” interposed the briefless one, “that this respectable gentleman is taken ill, and that his presence may now be dispensed with, as a witness in the cause.”

“No, sir, no;” deliberately answered Jennings; “I must stay:  the time I find is come; I have not slept for weeks; I am exhausted utterly; I have lost my gold; I am haunted by her ghost; I can go no where but that face follows me—­I can do nothing but her fingers clutch my throat.  It is time to end this misery.  In hope to lay her spirit, I would have offered up a victim:  but—­but she will not have him.  Mine was the hand that—­”

“Pardon me,” upstarted Mr. Sharp, “this poor gentleman is a mono-maniac; pray, my lurd, let him be removed while the trial is proceeding.”

“You horse-hair hypocrite, you!” roared Ben, “would you hang the innocent, and save the guilty?”

Would he? would Mr. Philip Sharp?  Ay, that he would; and glad of such a famous opportunity.  What! would not Newgate rejoice, and Horsemonger be glad?  Would not his bag be filled with briefs from the community of burglars, and his purse be rich in gold subscribed by the brotherhood of thieves?  Great at once would be his name among the purlieus of iniquity:  and every rogue in London would retain but Philip Sharp.  Would he? ask him again.

But Jennings quietly proceeded like a speaking statue.

“I am not mad, most noble—­” [the Bible-read villain was from habit quoting Paul]—­“my lord, I mean.  My hand did the deed:  I throttled her” (here he gave a scared look over his shoulder):  “yes—­I did it once and again:  I took the crock of gold.  You may hang me now, Aunt Quarles.”

“My lurd, my lurd, this is a most irregular proceeding,” urged Mr. Sharp; “on the part of the prisoner—­I, I crave pardon—­on behalf of this most respectable and deluded gentleman, Mr. Simon Jennings, I contend that no one may criminate himself in this way, without the shadow of evidence to support such suicidal testimony.  Really, my lurd—­”

“Oh, sir, but my father may go free?” earnestly asked Grace.  But Ben Burke’s voice—­I had almost written woice—­overwhelmed them all: 

“Let me speak, judge, an’t it please your honour, and take you notice, Master Horsehair.  You wan’t ewidence, do you, beyond the man’s confession:  here, I’ll give it you.  Look at this here wice:”  and he stretched forth his well-known huge and horny hand: 

“When I caught that dridful little reptil by the arm, he wriggled like a sniggled eel, so I was forced you see, to grasp him something tighter, and could feel his little arm-bones crack like any chicken’s:  now then, if his left elbow an’t black and blue, though it’s a month a-gone and more, I’ll eat it.  Strip him and see.”