tell ye! I alone"--

"Mother! mother! for the love of Heaven be silent!" shouted the prisoner
with frantic vehemence, and stretching himself over the front of the
dock, as if to grasp and restrain her.

"Innocent, I tell you!" continued the woman. "I--I alone am the guilty
person! It was I alone that perpetrated the deed! He knew it not,
suspected it not, till it was too late. Here," she added, drawing a sheet
of paper from her bosom--"here is my confession, with each circumstance
detailed!"

As she waved it over her head, it was snatched by her son, and, swift as
lightning, torn to shreds. "She is mad! Heed her not--believe her not!"
He at the same time shouted at the top of his powerful voice, "She is
distracted--mad! Now, my lord, your sentence! Come!"

The tumult and excitement in the court no language which I can employ
would convey an adequate impression of. As soon as calm was partially
restored, Mrs. Bourdon was taken into custody: the prisoner was removed;
and the court adjourned, of course without passing sentence.

It was even as his mother said! Subsequent investigation, aided by her
confessions, amply proved that the fearful crime was conceived and
perpetrated by her alone, in the frantic hope of securing for her
idolized son the hand and fortune of Miss Armitage. She had often been
present with him in his laboratory, and had thus become acquainted with
the uses to which certain agents could be put. She had purloined the key
of the recess; and he, unfortunately too late to prevent the perpetration
of the crime, had by mere accident discovered the abstraction of the