continued, and I could distinctly hear the word "_reprieve_" mixed with the shouts. Mr. D---- was at my back, and I felt his hands press me like a vice. The two men who were supporting Eugene, had also heard the sound, and, paralysed by the extraordinary announcement, they actually let the prisoner sink on the floor. The sound of his fall made me turn; the father had vanished, doubtless to meet the messenger, and communicate the tidings to his wife and daughter. A great bustle in the neighbouring cells succeeded. The two men stood and looked at me in silence. Eugene still lay on the floor, to all appearance insensible. By my orders he was immediately again lifted up, and dragged more violently than ever, backwards and forwards. In a few seconds, the turnkey came in, and struck off the irons, by which his ancle had been so severely torn that the blood flowed from it on the floor. He informed me that he was indeed reprieved, and that the fault of the delay was attributable to the authorities in London. I shouted in the ear of the young man the electric word; he lifted his head, looked wildly around him for a few seconds, and uttered a strange gurgling sound unlike any expression of the human voice I ever heard. I was indeed uncertain whether he understood me or not. In a few minutes more, the cell was crowded--the father, mother, and daughter, the chaplain, the messenger, and several of the officials, all bursting in, to see the condition of the criminal. To this I was not averse; because the more excitement that could be produced in the mind of the youth, the greater chance remained of our being able to keep off the deadly effects of the drug. A thousand times did the parent and mother sound into his dull ear the vocable pregnant with so much relief to him and his friends; but it was not until two hours afterwards that he was so far recovered as to understand perfectly the narrow escape he had made from death. In the evening he was conveyed home in a carriage; and, as they were leaving the jail, he looked out at the grim apparatus which had been erected for him, and which the workmen were removing in the midst of a dense crowd of citizens. Some days afterwards, Eugene D---- had almost entirely recovered from the effects of the poison. One day when I called, I found him lying on a sofa, with his mother sitting by his side. She took her eyes off her son, and bent them on me till tears filled them. "Before you entered," she said, "I was talking to Eugene about the request I made to you in the jail on that dreadful day, to let my son die. Repeatedly since, have I thought of my wild words; but they know little of human nature, at least little of the feelings of a mother in my situation, who could brand them as unnatural, or doubt the sanity that recognised fully their effect."