At this period it is evident that the idea of suicide only occupied his over-wrought brain. He wrote on the 7th April,--“When this reaches you I shall be no more.... You know where my affections were placed; my having by some means or other lost hers (an idea which I could not support) has driven me to madness.” So far he does not appear to have contemplated any violence against Miss Reay, for in his letter he commends her to the kind offices of his friend. He spent that day in self-communing and in reading a volume of Dr. Blair’s sermons. In the evening he went from his lodgings in Duke’s Court, St. Martin’s Lane, toward the Admiralty, and saw Miss Reay drive by to the Covent Garden Theatre. He followed her into the theatre and gazed at her for the last time. Then, unable to retrain the violence of his passion, he returned to his lodgings, and having loaded two pistols, returned to Covent Garden, where he waited in the piazza till the play was over. When Miss Reay came out he stepped up with a pistol in each hand. One he fired at her, and killed her on the spot, the other he discharged at himself, but without fatal effect. He was at once arrested, and when his wound had been dressed, was committed by Sir John Fielding to Tothill Fields, and afterwards to Newgate. He wrote from prison to the same friend as follows: “I am alive---- and she is dead. I shot her, shot her, and not myself. Some of her blood and brains is still upon my clothes. I don’t ask you to speak to me, I don’t ask you to look at me, only come hither and bring me a little poison, such as is strong enough. Upon my knees I beg, if your friendship for me ever was sincere, do, _do_ bring me some poison.” Next day he was more composed, and declared that nothing should tempt him to escape justice by suicide. “My death,” he writes, “is all the recompense I can make to the laws of my country.” He was tried before Mr. Justice Blackstone (of the Commentaries), and convicted on the clearest evidence. A plea of insanity was set up in his defence, but could not be maintained. His dignified address to the jury had nothing of madness in it, and it is probable that he had no real desire to escape the just punishment for his crime. This is shown by his answer to Lord Sandwich, who wrote:-- _17th April, 1779._ “TO MR. HACKMAN IN NEWGATE. “If the murderer of Miss ---- wishes to live, the man he has most injured will use all his interest to procure his life.” To this Hackman replied from “_The Condemned Cell in Newgate, 17th April, 1779._