As we
approached the place, the criminal was brought forth. He was a young man
about nineteen years of age, and had been found guilty of an aggravated
case of housebreaking. As the unhappy being turned round to look upon
the spectators, my companion gave a convulsive shriek, and, springing
from my side, exclaimed, "Righteous Heaven! my Willie! my murdered
Willie!" He had proceeded but a few paces, when he fell with his face
upon the ground. In the wretched criminal he discovered his lost, his
only son. The miserable old man was conveyed, in a state of
insensibility, to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, where I visited him the
next day: he seemed to suffer much, and in a few hours he died with a
shudder, and the word _procrastination_ on his tongue.
THE TEN OF DIAMONDS.
At length I reached the Moated Grange, on a visit to my friend Graeme.
But since I am to speak a good deal of this place, I may as well explain
that it was misnamed. There was no moat, nor had there been for a
hundred years; but round the old pile--hoary, and shrivelled, and
palsied enough, in all conscience, for delighting the mole-eye of any
antiquarian hunks--- there was a visible trace of the old ditch in a
hollow covered with green sward going all round the house, which hollow
was the only place clear of trees. And these trees! They stood for a
mile round, like an army of giants seventy feet high, all intent, it
would seem, upon choking the poor old pile, throwing their big arms over
the hollow, swinging them to and fro, and dashing their points against
the panes as the wind listed.
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