By and by, as the vengeful feeling of the public against the man increased, and nothing for a time was heard but the stifled groans for the second victim, it came out that the public prosecutor, having procured Hare's co-operation as a _socius criminis_ to convict Burke, and all the information which was necessary to bring home to the latter the three charges in the indictment, the Crown was pledged in honour not to proceed against him on any one of these counts. This was, in effect, to say that he was free whenever he could get out of the hands of the infuriated people; because, in so far as regarded the other cases, there was no evidence independently of his, and he would take precious care to withhold every word to criminate himself. It is needless to say that the most sensible of the editors, and all the thinking and honourable of the people, considered this statement of the authorities as reasonable and proper. They would stand upon the honour of the Crown and the dignity of human nature, even at the expense of giving liberation to a man who, by his own confession, was a murderer. They would therefore leave the vulgar to the _charum lumen_ of their prejudices, and so they were left. But, while thus taking this high and dignified ground against those whom a natural hatred of atrocity was said to make low, some ingenious one of their ranks struck out the idea that, though the Crown was shut up to let Hare off, some relative of one of the murdered persons might prosecute for assythment, or a compensation for the loss of life; and immediately it was found that Daft Jamie's mother, Mrs Wilson, with his sister, Janet Wilson, would be willing, if not anxious, to take the post of prosecutor--a piece of intelligence which pleased the public wondrously. This proposition was brought to bear by an application presented to the Sheriff on the part of the Wilsons, praying for liberty to precognosce witnesses with a view to the prosecution of Hare; on the deliverance upon which progress was being rapidly made in the examination of several persons, when immediately there was presented to his lordship a petition for Hare, craving to be set at liberty. On the 21st of January, the Sheriff pronounced an interlocutor refusing the prayer of Hare's petition, on the ground that there was no decision finding that the right of the private party to prosecute is barred by any guarantee or promise of indemnity given by the public prosecutor; but, in consequence of the novelty of the case, he superseded further progress with the precognitions, in order that Hare might have an opportunity of applying to the Court of Justiciary.