The child improved in health and, it is unnecessary to add, in morals. No enquiry or application was made for her by the pair until she had entered her fifth year, and then suddenly the prisoner demanded her instant restoration. The charitable lady was alarmed for the safety of her _protegée_, and, with a liberal price, bought off the father's natural desire. He duly gave a receipt for the sum thus paid him, and engaged to see the child no more. The next morning he stole the girl from the labourer's cottage. He was seen loitering about the hut before day-break, and the shrieks of the victim were heard plainly at a considerable distance from the spot where he had first seized her. Constables were dispatched to his den. It was shut up, and, being forced open, was found deserted, and stripped of every thing. He was hunted over the county, but not discovered. He had retired to haunts which baffled the detective skill of the most experienced and alert. This is the first act of the tragedy. It will be necessary to stain these pages by a description of the last. The child became more and more unhappy under the roof of her persecutors, as they soon proved themselves to be. She was taught to beg and to steal, and was taken into the highways by her mother, who watched near her, whilst, with streaming eyes, the unhappy creature now lied for alms, now pilfered from the village. Constant tramping, ill treatment, and the wear and tear of spirit which the new mode of existence effected, soon reduced the child to its former state of ill health and helplessness. She pined, and with her sickness came want and hunger to the hut. The father, affecting to disbelieve, and not listening to the sad creature's complaint, still dismissed her abroad, and when she could not walk, compelled the mother to carry her to the public road, and there to leave her in her agony, the more effectually to secure the sympathy of passengers. Even this opportunity was not long afforded him. The child grew weaker, and was at length unable to move. He plied her with menaces and oaths, and, last of all, deliberately threatened to murder her, if she did not rise and procure bread for all of them. She had, alas! no longer power to comply with his request, and--merciful Heaven!--the fiend, in a moment of unbridled passion, made good his fearful promise. With one blow of a hatchet--alas! it needed not a hard one--_he destroyed her_. I caught the judge's eye as this announcement was made. It quivered, and his countenance was pale. I wished to see the monster _too_, but my heart failed me, and my blood boiled with indignation, and I could not turn to him. The short account which I have given here does bare justice to the evidence which came thick and full against the prisoner, leaving upon the minds of none the remotest doubt of his fearful criminality. The mother, and a beggar who had passed the night in the hut when the murder was