Harvey, noticed in my previous paper. I half resolved to give up the bar,
and rather go and sweep the streets for a livelihood, than run the risk
of getting poor people hanged who did not deserve it.

On the Monday morning I was pacing up and down my break fast-room in the
next assize town, in a state of great excitement, when a chaise-and-four
drove rapidly up to the hotel, and out tumbled Johnson the constable. His
tale was soon told. On the previous evening, the landlady of the Black
Swan, a roadside public-house about four miles distant from the scene of
the murder, reading the name of Pearce in the report of the trial in the
Sunday county paper, sent for Johnston to state that that person had on
the fatal evening called and left a portmanteau in her charge, promising
to call for it in an hour, but had never been there since. On opening the
portmanteau, Wilson's watch, chains, and seals, and other property, were
discovered in it; and Johnson had, as soon as it was possible, set off in
search of me. Instantly, for there was not a moment to spare, I, in
company with Armstrong's counsel, sought the judge, and with some
difficulty obtained from him a formal order to the sheriff to suspend the
execution till further orders. Off I and the constable started, and
happily arrived in time to stay the execution, and deprive the
already-assembled mob of the brutal exhibition they so anxiously awaited.
On inquiring for Mary Strugnell, we found that she had absconded on the
evening of the trial. All search for her proved vain.

Five months had passed away; the fate of Armstrong and his wife was still
undecided, when a message was brought to my chambers in the Temple from a
woman said to be dying in St. Bartholomew's Hospital. It was Mary
Strugnell; who, when in a state of intoxication, had fallen down in front
of a carriage, as she was crossing near Holborn Hill, and had both her
legs broken. She was dying miserably, and had sent for me to make a full