The witness looked wildly round the court, as if in search of counsel or sympathy; but encountering none but frowning and eager faces--Thorndyke she could not discern in the darkness--she became giddy and panic-stricken, and seemed to lose all presence of mind. "He--he--he," she at last gasped--"he mixed it. I do not know--But how," she added, pushing back her hair, and pressing her hands against her hot temples, "can this be? What can it mean?" A movement amongst the bystanders just at this moment attracted the notice of the judge, and he immediately exclaimed, "The defendant must not leave the court!" An officer placed himself beside the wretched murderer as well as forger, and I resumed the cross-examination of the witness. "Now, Mrs. Tucker, please to look at this letter." (It was that which had been addressed to Mary Woodley by her son.) "That, I believe, is your son's handwriting?" "Yes." "The body of this will has been written by the same hand. Now, woman, answer. Was it your son--this young man who, you perceive, if guilty, cannot escape from justice--was it he who forged the names of the deceased Mrs. Thorndyke, and of John Cummins attached to it?" "Not he--not he!" shrieked the wretched woman. "It was Thorndyke--Thorndyke himself." And then with a sudden revulsion of feeling, as the consequences of what she had uttered flashed upon her, she exclaimed, "Oh, Silas, what have I said?--what have I done?" "Hanged me, that's all, you accursed devil!" replied Thorndyke with gloomy ferocity. "But I deserve it for trusting in such an idiot: dolt and fool that I was for doing so." The woman sank down in strong convulsions, and was, by direction of the judge, carried out of the hall. The anxious silence which pervaded the court during this scene, in which the reader will have observed I played a bold, tentative, and happily-successful game, was broken as the witness was borne off by a loud murmur of indignation, followed by congratulatory exclamations on the fortunate termination of the suit. The defendant's counsel threw up their briefs, and a verdict was at once returned for the plaintiff. All the inculpated parties were speedily in custody; and the body of Mrs. Thorndyke having been disinterred, it was discovered that she had been destroyed by bichloride of mercury, of which a considerable quantity was detected in the body. I was not present at the trial of Thorndyke and his accomplices--he for murder, and Headley for perjury--but I saw by the public prints that he was found guilty, and executed: Headley was transported: the woman was, if I remember rightly, admitted evidence for the crown.