One plunge of the sharp steel with all the strength of his powerful arm, one low groan as the poor victim sank back on the steps, and it was done, and Jim flying for life and liberty. His mother was not dead when she was found, but it was quite evident that she was mortally wounded. When her state was known, and preparations made to take her deposition, she persisted that she had been stabbed by Joe Knevitt. The knife found by her side was Jim Hutson’s, but his mother, innocently or knowingly—I cannot tell which—said— “Jim was aye a gude laddie, and though he was led away he wadna lift his hand against his mother. Joe Knevitt did it, the ungrateful scoondrel, after me daeing him a gude turn. _But dinna tell Jim_ or he’ll kill him, and twa deaths winna mak’ ae life.” We easily picked up Knevitt, but he denied the whole with such manifest horror, and gave such explanations, that we set out to hunt for Jim, and I was the one destined to unearth him; and also, I regret to say, to inform him of the fearful crime he had committed. That scene I can never describe. He dropped on his knees, rolled and writhed on the floor, tearing his hair in a frenzy of agony, moaning out but the two words—“My mother! My mother! My mother!” Of course he confessed the whole crime in every detail; but his mother was never told of the hand that gave her the death-blow. She lingered for some months, and, the doctors said, did not actually die of the wound, but of some trouble of the heart, brought on by the excitement and pain. Jim was tried and convicted of manslaughter only, and was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. The sentence may seem light, but _that_ was not his punishment. He carried that within him. Joe Knevitt’s bones now lie in the prison yard, but Jim’s dust is in a foreign land, where he died on a battlefield in a way that made men call him a hero. They did not know the secret of his daring. THE HERRING SCALES.