The next morning speculation was busy that at so late an hour the shutters of Mrs. Tibs's house remained unopened; she was an early riser, and now 'twas noon; their knocking obtaining no answer, the door was forced; and in the back room they found Biddy Tibs upon the ground, dead, with a handkerchief knotted round her throat. The small cupboard in the recess was thrown wide open, and her drawers forced; and it was soon spread over the town that Biddy Tibs was murdered!
A few weeks had passed, and anxious and expectant thousands were seen moving in a huge mass on the road to Tyburn. A man was to be hanged! And, as the people have so little recreation, of course the roads were thronged with delighted crowds, all hastening to the "gallows-tree." Women yelled their execrations at the head of the pale and shaking culprit, for he had murdered one of their own sex; and clapped and shouted as the cart drew from under his clinging feet. Men, "as it was only for a woman," "thought hanging too bad," and merely hooted, groaned, and hissed. Indeed, so popular was the excitement, that ladies—real ones, for they paid guineas for a sight on a waggon,—waved their handkerchief, and wondered such wretches were suffered to exist.
As the last struggle of the swinging corpse left him stiff and dead, a half-clothed and haggard woman asked, in a hoarse and shaking voice, the name of the murderer.
"What, that 'ere?" was the reply, and a finger pointed to the stripling figure of the hanging man; "he as murdered his aunt?—why Slashing Bill, alias Teg Dyke."
A scream—a wild and shrieking scream rang through the air, and Laura dropt senseless.
The bulk of Mrs. Tibs's property came to her niece, but disease had left her scarce a shadow of herself. Her eyes looked leaden! Want, sorrow, and dissipation had writ their blight upon her, and, at the end of six months,—an apothecary having been frequent in his visits,—poor Laura was no more!
How different had been the fate of Biddy Tibs had she lent her brother Dick the score of pounds! Teg would have been an honest tradesman like himself, Laura a tradesman's wife, Biddy had lived for years, and the pillow of her death-bed been smoothed by the hands of loving friends. But, as it was, her brother died from want; Biddy fell, strangled by her nephew's hand. He had been seen in a taproom, where the wealth of the old woman who lived at the wooden house was talked of; part was traced to him; his companion confessed; and Teg died a felon's death; Laura, from the effects of want and dissipation!
Biddy's property was the subject of a law-suit between two of her distant relations, which, to the best of our knowledge, remains unsettled to this day!
In a village churchyard in the neighbourhood of London the grass grows rank about a tombstone which is still pointed at as the grave of "Biddy Tibs, who cared for nobody!"
H. Holl.