"John!--John!" sobbed the wife, clinging passionately to her husband,
"let us die together!"

"Quiet, Martha, I tell ye! Yes, my lord, I'se tell ye all about it. I was
gone away, wife and I, for more nor a week, to receive money for Mr.
Wilson, on account of smuggled goods--that money, my lord, as was found
in the chest. When we came home on that dreadful Sunday night, my lord,
we went in the back way; and hearing a noise, I went up stairs, and found
poor Wilson stone-dead on the floor. I were dreadful skeared, and let
drop the candle. I called to wife, and told her of it. She screamed out,
and amaist fainted away. And then, my lord, all at once the devil shot
into my head to keep the money I had brought; and knowing as the keys of
the desk where the mortgage writing was kept was in the bedroom, I crept
back, as that false-hearted woman said, got the keys, and took the deed;
and then I persuaded wife, who had been trembling in the kitchen all the
while, that we had better go out quiet again, as there was nobody in the
house but us: I had tried that woman's door--and we might perhaps be
taken for the murderers. And so we did; and that's the downright, honest
truth, my lord. I'm rightly served; but God bless you, doant hurt the
woman--my wife, my lord, these thirty years. Five-and-twenty years ago
come May, which I shall never see, we buried our two children. Had they
lived, I might have been a better man; but the place they left empty was
soon filled up by love of cursed lucre, and that has brought me here. I
deserve it; but oh, mercy, my lord! mercy, good gentlemen!"--turning from
the stony features of the judge to the jury, as if they could help
him--"not for me, but the wife. She be as innocent of this as a new-born
babe. It's I! I! scoundrel that I be, that has brought thee, Martha, to
this shameful pass!" The rugged man snatched his life-companion to his
breast with passionate emotion, and tears of remorse and agony streamed