Margaret was soon again visited by the officers of the law; but she remained firm to her resolution, not to say anything tending to implicate Sir Willoughby. Recourse was therefore had, according to the usages of that period, to the ordinary mode of dealing with an unwilling witness. She was now told, that, as a person refractory, and disobedient to the laws of her country, she must go to prison, where the means of extorting her withholden testimony would be more in the power of the crown officials. She was, accordingly, conveyed to the prison in which Sir Willoughby was confined, and intimation was solemnly made to her that, on the following morning, she would be subjected to the rack of the thumbikins. The threat was fulfilled with fidelity and vigour. On the first application of this cruel instrument, the poor girl screamed with agony; but the unstability of her frame, attenuated and weakened by her previous sufferings, and her pregnancy, loosened, under the effect of the torture, that connection between agony and resolution, without which all tortured methods of extorting testimony must be unavailing. Every increased pressure produced an agonized scream, succeeded by a state of insensibility, or faint, which these deluded searchers for truth had as much difficulty in bringing her out of, as they had in producing. The torture continued to be applied, at stated intervals, for days, and the screams of the unfortunate maiden could not fail to find their way to the ears, if not to the heart, of the wretch by whom her sufferings had been occasioned. Little impression, however, was produced on Margaret's resolution to die with her secret; and, upon the occasion of one application of the instrument, the syncope produced had so long a period of duration, that the medical man who was present declared that it could not be applied without danger of producing death. The officers were now inclined to allow the period of Margaret's pregnancy to pass before they again applied the instrument--a circumstance of rather an anamolous nature in the proceedings of these lovers of truth; for a true medical philalethes would naturally have conceived, that the weaker the habit of the patient, the more certain was the chance of a recovery. In the meantime, however, a circumstance came to the ears of the king's prosecutor, which induced him to relax his energies in the prosecution of Sir Willoughby. Several of his servants now declared, (no doubt by the aid of concealed bribery), that Richard Forster was in the habit of attiring himself in his master's garments, and personating him in the prosecution of amours. In addition to this, Janet Hunter, though called upon, could not swear that Margaret Williamson had stirred from the house on the day of the murder. Unable to force Margaret to speak, and influenced by the testimony of these witnesses, the public prosecutor came to the resolution of liberating Sir Willoughby, and the knight was accordingly let out of gaol.