The gentle Lady Emily quits her father’s room with leave to speak again of Christian mercy, but with no further gain. Still there is time to save the unoffending, and it is not lost. When every hope seemed gone, impelled by an irresistible impulse, and fortified by an unwavering conviction of the prisoner’s innocence, Mr Hylton, on the Friday evening preceding the Monday fixed for Ayliffe’s execution, as a last resource, had, relying on the king’s well-known sternly independent character, written a letter to his Majesty, under cover to a nobleman then in London attending Parliament, and with whom Mr Hylton had been acquainted at college. Mr Hylton’s letter to the King was expressed in terms of grave eloquence. It set out with calling his Majesty’s attention to the execution, six months before, of a man for a crime of which three days afterwards he was demonstrated to have been innocent. Then the letter gave a moving picture of the exemplary life and character of the prisoner, and of his father; pointed to testimonials given in his favour at the trial; and added the writer’s own, together with the most solemn and strong conviction which could be expressed in language, that whoever might have been the perpetrator of this most atrocious murder, it was not the prisoner doomed to die on Monday. It then conjured his Majesty, by every consideration which could properly have weight with a sovereign intrusted with authority by Almighty God, to govern according to justice and mercy, to give his personal attention to the case then laid before him, and act thereon according to his Majesty’s own royal and element judgment. The letter suggested by heaven, written by heaven’s minister, and read by heaven’s intrusted servant, achieved its mission. The King read, and commuted the sentence of death to that of transportation. Upon the morning fixed for the execution a reprieve arrived, almost as the doomed man was walking from his cell to the gallows.