Andrew Bridgman, recalled to himself by the magistrate's voice, hastily said "that he did not recognize this prisoner as one of the burglars. Indeed," he added, with a swift but meaning look at the two servants, "I am pretty sure he was not one of them." The groom and gardener, influenced no doubt by their master's manner, also appeared doubtful as to whether Robert Williams was one of the housebreakers. "But if he be," hesitated the groom, hardly knowing whether he did right or wrong, "there must be some smartish wounds on his arms, for I hit him there sharply with the knife several times."
The downcast head of the youthful burglar was suddenly raised at these words, and he said, quickly, while a red flush passed over his pallid features, "Not me, not me—look, my arm-sleeves have no holes—no—"
"You may have obtained another jacket," interrupted the magistrate. "We must see your arms."
An expression of hopeless despair settled upon the prisoner's face; he again hung down his head in shame, and allowed the constables to quietly strip off his jacket. Andrew Bridgman, who had gone to some distance, returned while this was going on, and watched for what might next disclose itself with tenfold curiosity and eagerness. "There are stabs enough here, sure enough," exclaimed a constable, as he turned up the shirt-sleeve on the prisoner's left arm. There were, indeed; and in addition to them, natural marks of two strawberries were distinctly visible. The countenance of Andrew Bridgman grew ashy pale, as his straining eyes glared upon the prisoner's naked arm. The next moment he wrenched himself away, as with an effort, from the sight, and staggered to an open window—sick, dizzy, fainting, it was at the time believed, from the closeness of the atmosphere in the crowded room. Was it not rather that he had recognized his long-lost brother—the true heir to the bulk of his deceased father's wealth, against whom, he might have thought, an indictment would scarcely lie for feloniously entering his own house! He said nothing, however, and the two prisoners were fully committed for trial.
Mr. Prince went down "special" to Bury, at the next assize, to defend a gentleman accused of a grave offense, but the grand jury having ignored the bill, he would probably have returned at once, had not an attorney brought him a brief, very heavily marked, in defense of "Robert Williams." "Strangely enough, too," remarked the attorney, as he was about to go away, "the funds for the defense have been supplied by Mr. Andrew Bridgman, whose house the prisoner is accused of having burglariously entered. But this is confidential, as he is very solicitous that his oddly-generous action should not be known." There was, however, no valid defense. The ill-favored accomplice, why, I know not, had been admitted king's evidence by the counsel for the crown, and there was no resisting the accumulated evidence. The prisoner was found guilty, and sentenced to be hanged. "I never intended," he said, after the verdict was returned; and there was a tone of dejected patience in his voice that affected one strangely, "I never intended to commit violence against any one in the house, and but that my uncle—he that was shot—said repeatedly that he knew a secret concerning Mr. Bridgman (he didn't know, I am sure, that he was dead) which would prevent us from being prosecuted if we were caught, I should not have been persuaded to go with him. It was my first offense—in—in housebreaking, I mean."
I had, and indeed have, some relatives in Mildenhall, in the same county, whom, at the termination of the Bury assize, I got leave to visit for a few days. While there, it came to my knowledge that Mr. Andrew Bridgman, whom I had seen in court, was moving heaven and earth to procure a commutation of the convict's sentence to transportation for life. His zealous efforts were unsuccessful; and the Saturday County Journal announced that Robert Williams, the burglar, would suffer, with four others, on the following Tuesday morning. I reached Bury on the Monday evening, with the intention of proceeding by the London night coach, but there was no place vacant. The next morning I could only have ridden outside, and as, besides being intensely cold, it was snowing furiously, I determined on postponing my departure till the evening, and secured an inside place for that purpose. I greatly abhor spectacles of the kind, and yet, from mere idleness and curiosity, I suffered myself to be drawn into the human stream flowing toward "Hang Fair," and once jammed in with the crowd in front of the place of execution, egress was, I found, impossible. After waiting a considerable time, the death-bell suddenly tolled, and the terrible procession appeared—five human beings about to be suffocated by human hands, for offenses against property!—the dreadful and deliberate sacrifice preluded and accompanied by sonorous sentences from the Gospel of mercy and compassion! Hardly daring to look up, I saw little of what passed on the scaffold, yet one furtive, quickly-withdrawn glance, showed me the sufferer in whom I took most interest. He was white as if already coffined, and the unquiet glare of his eyes was, I noticed, terribly anxious! I did not again look up—I could not; and the surging murmur of the crowd, as it swayed to and fro, the near whisperings of ribald tongues, and the measured, mocking tones of the minister, promising eternal life through the mercy of the most high God, to wretches whom the justice of man denied a few more days or years of mortal existence—were becoming momently more and more oppressive, when a dull, heavy sound boomed through the air; the crowd swayed violently from side to side, and the simultaneous expiration of many pent-up breaths testified that all was over, and to the relief experienced by the coarsest natures at the consummation of a deed too frightful for humanity to contemplate. It was some time before the mass of spectators began to thoroughly separate, and they were still standing in large clusters, spite of the bitter, falling weather, when a carriage, furiously driven, with the body of a female, who was screaming vehemently and waving a white handkerchief, projected half out of one of the windows, was seen approaching by the London Road. The thought appeared to strike every one that a respite or reprieve had come for one or more of the prisoners, and hundreds of eyes were instantly turned toward the scaffold, only to see that if so it had arrived too late. The carriage stopped at the gate of the building. A lady dressed in deep mourning, was hastily assisted out by a young man with her, similarly attired, and they both disappeared within the jail. After some parleying, I ascertained that I had sufficient influence to obtain admission, and a few moments afterward I found myself in the press-room. The young man—Mr. Andrew Bridgman—was there, and the lady, who had fallen fainting upon one of the benches, was his mother. The attendants were administering restoratives to her, without effect, till an inner door opened, and the under-sheriff, by whom she was personally known, entered; when she started up and interrogated, with the mute agony of her wet, yet gleaming eyes, the dismayed and distressed official. "Let me entreat you, my dear madam," he faltered, "to retire. This is a most painful—fright—"
"No—no, the truth!—the truth!" shrieked the unfortunate lady, wildly clasping her hands, "I shall bear that best!"
"Then I grieve to say," replied the under-sheriff, "that the marks you describe—two on the left, and one on the right arm, are distinctly visible."
A piercing scream, broken by the words, "My son!—oh God!—my son!" burst from the wretched mother's lips, and she fell heavily, and without sense or motion, upon the stone floor. While the under-sheriff and others raised and ministered to her, I glanced at Mr. Andrew Bridgman. He was as white as the lime-washed wall against which he stood, and the fire that burned in his dark eyes was kindled—it was plain to me—by remorse and horror, not by grief alone.
The cause of the sudden appearance of the mother and son at the closing scene of this sad drama was afterward thus explained:—Andrew Bridgman, from the moment that all hope of procuring a commutation of the sentence on the so-called Robert Williams had ceased, became exceedingly nervous and agitated, and his discomposure seemed to but augment as the time yet to elapse before the execution of the sentence passed away. At length, unable longer to endure the goadings of a tortured conscience, he suddenly burst into the room where his mother sat at breakfast, on the very morning his brother was to die, with an open letter in his hand, by which he pretended to have just heard that Robert Williams was the long-lost Mark Bridgman! The sequel has been already told.