"You here?" he stammered, as he mechanically took a chair by the fire. "Who would have thought it?"
"Not you, Jim, I'm sure; it must be, therefore, an unexpected pleasure. I'm come to have a smoke and a bit of chat with you, Berry—there isn't a riper Berry than you are in the kingdom—before you go to London, Jim—do you mark?—before you go to London—ha, ha! ho, ho! But, zounds! how pale and shaky you're looking, and before this rousing fire, too! D—n thee, villain!" shouted Burnham, jumping suddenly up from his chair, and dashing his pipe to fragments on the floor. "I can't play with thee any longer. Tell me—when did the devil teach thee to stuff coat-collars with the spoils of murdered men, eh?"
A yell of dismay escaped Berry, and he made a desperate rush to get past Burnham. Vainly did so. The fierce publican caught him by the throat, and held him by a grip of steel. "You're caught, scoundrel!—nicked, trapped, found out, and by whom, think you? Why, by deaf, paralytic, Margery, whose old eyes have never wearied in watching you from the hour you slew and robbed her good old master till to-day, when you dreamed yourself alone, and she discovered the mystery of the coat-collar."
"Let me go!" gasped the miscreant, down whose pallid cheeks big drops of agony were streaming. "Take all, and let me go."
A fierce imprecation followed by a blow, replied to the despairing felon. A constable, attracted by the increasing uproar, soon arrived; the thick coat-collar was ripped, and in it were found a considerable sum in Exeter notes—the ruby ring, and other valuables well known to have belonged to Mr. Bradshaw. Berry was quickly lodged in jail. A true bill was returned the next day by the grand jury before noon, and by the time the clock struck four, the murderer was, on his own confession, convicted of the foul crime of which a perfectly innocent man had been not many hours before pronounced guilty! A great lesson this was felt to be at the time in Exeter, and in the western country generally. A lesson of the watchfulness of Providence over innocent lives; of rebuke to the self-sufficing infallibility of men, however organized or empaneled, and of patience under unmerited obloquy and slander.
Edward Drysdale was, I need hardly say, liberated by the king's pardon—pardoned for an uncommitted offense, and he and his true-hearted wife, the heiress of her uncle, are still living, I believe, in competence, content, and harmony.
[A PRISON-SCENE DURING THE REIGN OF TERROR.]
I was mentioning one day to an old friend and fellow-rambler of mine the pleasure I had derived from a visit to the Palais du Luxembourg, in Paris. "Oh," said he, "my recollections of the Luxembourg Palace are any thing but pleasant. One entire generation has passed away, and a second has followed far on the same road, since I entered it; but were I to live to the age of an antediluvian, I imagine the remembrance of the period which I passed in the Luxembourg would dwell with me to the last hour of my life."
These words naturally raised my curiosity, and, from the character of the speaker, whom I had known for many years as a man of much and varied knowledge and unimpeachable probity, also aroused my sympathy; I pressed him, therefore, to favor me with the incidents which had made so indelible an impression upon his mind. He made no difficulty of complying with my request; but, stirring the fire, and leaning back in his easy chair, delivered his brief narrative very nearly in the following words.