were, in the very neighbourhood where I lived. There was a connection
and progress in this narrative, which made it altogether unlike the
little village incidents I had hitherto known. My feelings were
successively interested for the different persons that were brought upon
the scene. My veneration was excited for Mr. Clare, and my applause for
the intrepidity of Mrs. Hammond. I was astonished that any human
creature should be so shockingly perverted as Mr. Tyrrel. I paid the
tribute of my tears to the memory of the artless Miss Melville. I found
a thousand fresh reasons to admire and love Mr. Falkland.

At present I was satisfied with thus considering every incident in its
obvious sense. But the story I had heard was for ever in my thoughts,
and I was peculiarly interested to comprehend its full import. I turned
it a thousand ways, and examined it in every point of view. In the
original communication it appeared sufficiently distinct and
satisfactory; but as I brooded over it, it gradually became mysterious.
There was something strange in the character of Hawkins. So firm, so
sturdily honest and just, as he appeared at first; all at once to become
a murderer! His first behaviour under the prosecution, how accurately
was it calculated to prepossess one in his favour! To be sure, if he
were guilty, it was unpardonable in him to permit a man of so much
dignity and worth as Mr. Falkland to suffer under the imputation of his
crime! And yet I could not help bitterly compassionating the honest
fellow, brought to the gallows, as he was, strictly speaking, by the
machinations of that devil incarnate, Mr. Tyrrel. His son, too, that son
for whom he voluntarily sacrificed his all, to die with him at the same
tree; surely never was a story more affecting!

Was it possible, after all, that Mr. Falkland should be the murderer?
The reader will scarcely believe, that the idea suggested itself to my