instantly turned toward the scaffold, only to see that if so it had arrived too late. The carriage stopped at the gate of the building. A lady dressed in deep mourning, was hastily assisted out by a young man with her, similarly attired, and they both disappeared within the jail. After some parleying, I ascertained that I had sufficient influence to obtain admission, and a few moments afterward I found myself in the press-room. The young man--Mr. Andrew Bridgman--was there, and the lady, who had fallen fainting upon one of the benches, was his mother. The attendants were administering restoratives to her, without effect, till an inner door opened, and the under-sheriff, by whom she was personally known, entered; when she started up and interrogated, with the mute agony of her wet, yet gleaming eyes, the dismayed and distressed official. "Let me entreat you, my dear madam," he faltered, "to retire. This is a most painful--fright--" "No--no, the truth!--the truth!" shrieked the unfortunate lady, wildly clasping her hands, "I shall bear that best!" "Then I grieve to say," replied the under-sheriff, "that the marks you describe--two on the left, and one on the right arm, are distinctly visible." A piercing scream, broken by the words, "My son!--oh God!--my son!" burst from the wretched mother's lips, and she fell heavily, and without sense or motion, upon the stone floor. While the under-sheriff and others raised and ministered to her, I glanced at Mr. Andrew Bridgman. He was as white as the lime-washed wall against which he stood, and the fire that burned in his dark eyes was kindled--it was plain to me--by remorse and horror, not by grief alone. The cause of the sudden appearance of the mother and son at the closing scene of this sad drama was afterward thus explained:--Andrew Bridgman, from the moment that all hope of procuring a commutation of the sentence on the so-called Robert Williams had ceased, became exceedingly nervous and agitated, and his discomposure seemed to but augment as the time yet to elapse before the execution of the sentence passed away. At length, unable longer to endure the goadings of a tortured conscience, he suddenly burst into the room where his mother sat at breakfast, on the very morning his brother was to die, with an open letter in his hand, by which he pretended to have just heard that Robert Williams was the long-lost Mark Bridgman! The sequel has been already told.