THE LAWYER'S TALES.

THE WOMAN WITH THE WHITE MICE.

Many have, doubtless, both heard and read of the case of murder in which Jeffrey performed his greatest feat of oratory and power over a jury, and in which, while engaged in his grand speech of more than six hours, he caught, from an open window, the aphony which threatened to close up his voice for ever afterwards. I have had occasion to notice the wants in reported cases tried before courts; and in reference to the one I have now mentioned, I have reason, from my inquiries, to know that the most curious details of the transaction are not only not to be found in the report, but not even suggested, if they do not, in some particulars, appear to be opposed to the public testimony. The agent of the panel sits behind the counsel, delivering to him sometimes very crude materials for the defence, and the counsel sifts that matter; sometimes taking a handful of the chaff to blind a juryman or a judge, but more often casting it away as either useless or dangerous. In that unused chaff there are often pickles not of the kind put into the sack, and again laid as an offering before the blind goddess, but of a different kind of grain—nor often less pleasant, or, if applied, less acceptable to justice.

In a certain month in the year 18—, a writer in Dundee, of the name of David M——, was busy in his office, in a dark street off the High Street—busy, no doubt, in discharging the functions of that office represented by Æsop as occupied by a monkey, holding the scales between the litigating cats. He heard a horse stop at his office door, as if brought suddenly up by a jerk of the rein.

"There is haste here," he thought; "what is up?"

And presently the door opened, and there came, or rather rushed, in a man, of the appearance of a country farmer, greatly more excited than these douce men generally are—except, perhaps, in the midst of a plentiful harvest-home—splashed up with mud to the back of the neck, and breathing as hard as, no doubt, the horse was that carried him.

"What is it, Mr. S——?" inquired the writer, as he looked at his client.

"A dreadful business!" replied he; and he turned, went back to the door, shut it, and tested the hold of the lock; then laying down his hat and whip, and pulling off his big-coat, he drew a chair so near the writer, that the man of law, brusque and even jolly as he was, instinctively withdrew his, as if he feared an appeal for money.

"What is the business?" again asked the writer, as he saw the man in a spasmodic difficulty to begin.

"We are all ruined at D——!" he at length said; "Mrs. S—— is in your jail, hard by, on a charge of murder."

"Mrs. S——! of all the women in the world!" ejaculated the writer in unfeigned amazement: "murder of whom?"

"Of a servant at D——," replied Mr. S——; "one of our own women."

"And what could be the motive?"

"The young woman," continued S——, "had been observed to be pregnant, and the report was got up that my son was the party responsible and blameable. Then the charge is, that my wife gave the girl poison, either to procure abortion, or to take away her life. The woman is dead and buried; but, I believe, her body has been taken up out of the grave and examined, and poison found in the stomach."

"An ugly account," said the writer. "I mean not ugly as regards the evidence, of which, as yet, I have heard nothing. I could say beforehand that I don't believe the authorities will be able to bring home an act of this kind to so rational and respectable a woman, as I have known Mrs. S——to be; but if you wish me to get her off, you must allow me to look at the case as if she were guilty."

"Guilty!" echoed the man, with a shudder.

"Yes. Were I to go fumbling about in an affair of this kind, acting upon a notion—whatever I may think or feel—that Mrs. S——, though your wife, could not possibly do an act of that kind, I would neither hound up, as I ought, the investigations of the prosecutor, nor get up proper evidence—not to meet their proofs only, but to overturn them."

"I would have thought you would have been keener to get off an innocent person—a wife, and the mother of a family, too—than a guilty one," said S——.

"We cannot get you people to understand these things," replied the writer; "but so it is, at least with me, and I rather think a good number of my brethren. We have a pride in getting off a guilty person; whereas we have only a spice of satisfaction in saving an innocent one. Perhaps I have an object, for your own sake, in speaking thus frankly to you; and I tell you at once, that if you intend to help me to get off your wife, you must, as soon as you can—even here, at this moment—renounce all blind confidence in her innocence."

"Terrible condition!" said the farmer.

"Not pleasant, but useful. How, in God's name, am I to know how to doctor, purge, or scarify, or anoint a testimony against you, unless I know that it exists, and where to find it?"

"Very true," rejoined the farmer, trying to follow the clever "limb."

"Don't hesitate. I will have more pleasure, and not, maybe, much less hope, in hearing you detail all the grounds of your suspicion against your wife, than in listening to your nasaling and canting about her innocence. All this is for your good, my dear sir, take it as you will."

"I believe it," said the farmer, "and will try to act up to what you say; but I cannot, of my own knowledge, say much, as yet. These things are done privately, within the house, and a farmer is mostly out of doors."

"Well, away, get access to your wife, ferret everything out of her, as well for her as against her. If she bought poison, where she bought it, what rats were to be poisoned, how it was applied, how she communicated with the girl, and where, and all, and everything you can gather. Question your servants all they saw or heard; your son, what he has to say; ascertain who came about the house, how affected towards the girl, whether there were more lovers than your son, whether the girl was melancholy, or hopeful, and likely to do the thing or not; but, above all, keep it ever in view that your wife is in prison, and suspected, and let me know every item you can bring against her. Away, and lose no time, for I see it's a matter of neck and neck between her and the prosecutor, and, consequently, neck and noose, or neck and no noose, between her and the hangman."

Utterly confounded by this array of instructions, the poor farmer sat and looked blank. It was impossible he could remember all he had been requested to do; and the duty of finding out facts to criminate the wife who had lived with him so long in love and confidence, bore down upon him with a weight he could hardly sustain.

"I will do what I can," he said.

"You must do more than you can," said the writer; "but, again I say, let me know every, the smallest item you can discover against your wife."

And, thus charged, Mr. S—— mounted his horse, and rode home to a miserable house with a miserable heart.

Extraordinary as the case was, it was entrusted to the charge of an extraordinary man, well remembered yet throughout that county, and much beyond it. In personal respects he was strong, broad, and muscular, with a florid countenance never out of humour, and an eye that flashed in so many different directions, that it was impossible to arrest it for two moments at a time. All action, nothing resisted him; all impulse and sensibility, nothing escaped his observation; yet no one could say that any subject retained his mind for more time than would have sufficed another merely to glance at it. He could speak to a hundred men in a day upon a hundred topics, and sit down and run off twenty pages of a paper without an hour of previous meditation; break off at a pronoun, at a call to the further end of the town; drink as much in a few minutes' conversation with a client as would have taken another an hour to enjoy, and return and finish his paper in less time than another would take to think of it. Always, to appearance, off his guard, he was always master of his position, nor could any obstacle make him stand and calculate its dimensions—it must be surmounted or broken, if his head or the laws should be broken with it; always pressing, he never seemed to be impressed, and the gain or loss of a case was equally indifferent to him. His passion was action, his desire money; but the money went as it came—made without effort and spent without reason. Yet no man hated him; most loved him; few admired him; and even those he might injure by his apparent recklessness could not resist the good nature by which he warded off every attack.

He saw at once, after he had dismissed S——, that he had got hold of a desperate case, and also that he behoved to have recourse to desperate means; but it seemed to take no grip of his mind for more than a few minutes, by the end of which he was full swing in some other matter of business, to be followed with the same rapidity by something else, and, probably, after that, pleasure till three in the morning, when he would be carried home to an elegant house in a certain species of carriage with one wheel. Nor had even that consummation any effect on to-morrow's avocations, for which he would be ready at the earliest hour; and in this case he was ready. He set about his inquiries, first proceeded to D—— to get a view of the premises—the room where the young woman lay, where the son slept, and the bedroom of the mother—and ascertain whether the premises permitted of intercourse with the servants unknown to the farmer and his wife. He next began his precognition of those connected with the house, and, on returning to town, procured access to Mrs. S——.

The jail of Dundee was at that time over the courthouse, a miserable den of a few dark rooms, presenting the appearance of displenished garrets, with small grated windows and a few benches. Here the woman sat revolving, no doubt, in her mind all the events of a life of comfort and respectability, and now under the risk of being brought to a termination by her body being suspended in the front of that building where she had seen before this terrible consummation of justice enacted with the familiar and dismal forms of the tragedy of the gallows. We write of these things as parrots gabble, we read of them as monkeys ogle the, to them, strange actions of human beings; but what is all that comes by the eye or the ear of the experiences of an exterior spirit to the workings of that spirit in its own interior world, where thought follows thought with endless ramifications, weaving and interweaving scenes of love and joy and pain, contrasting and mixing, dissolving and remixing—bright lights and dark shadows—all seen through the blue-tinged and distorting lens of present shame? We cannot realize these things, nor did the writer try. He had only the practical work to do—if possible, to get this woman's neck kept out of a kench; nor did it signify much to him how that was effected; but effected it would be, if the invention of one man could do it, and if that failed, and the woman was suspended, it would trouble him no more than would the loss of a small-debt case.

"Sorry to see you in this infernal place, Mrs. S——," he said, as he threw himself upon a bench. "I must get you out, that's certain; but I can promise you that certainty only upon the condition of making a clean breast—only to me, you know."

"I know only that I never poisoned the woman," replied she.

"Do you want to be hanged?" said he, with the reckless abruptness so peculiar a feature of his character, at the same time taking a rapid glance of her demeanour. He knew all about the firmness derived from the confidence of innocence, of which a certain class of rhapsodists make so much in a heroic way, and yet he had always entertained the heterodoxical notion that guilt is a firmer and often more composed condition than innocence, inasmuch as his experience led him to know that the latter is shaky, anxious, and sensitive, and the former stern and imperturbable. Nor did his quick mind want reasons for showing that such ought, by natural laws, to be the case; for it is never to be lost sight of, that, in so far as regards murder, which requires for its perpetration a peculiar form of mind and a most unnatural condition of the feelings, the same hardness of nerve which enables a man or woman to do the deed, serves equally well the purpose of helping them to stand up against the shame, while the innocent person, in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand—the probable proportion of those who cannot kill—has not the fortitude to withstand the ignominy, simply because he wants the power to slay. So without in his heart prejudging the woman, he drew his conclusions, true or false, from the impassibility of her demeanour. Her answer was ready——

"How could they hang an innocent woman?"

"But they do hang hundreds, who say just what you say," replied he. "What are you to make of that riddle? Come, did you ever buy any poison?—please leave out the rats."

"No; neither for rats nor servants," was the composed reply.

"And you never gave the woman a dose?"

"Yes; I have given her medicine more than once."

"Oh, a capital thing to save life; but you know her life was not saved. She died and was buried, and has been taken up; and I suspect it was not your jalap that was found in the body. But what interest had you in being so very kind to the woman who was to bring shame on your family by bearing a child to your son?"

"I never knew she was in that way; but though I had known it, I could not have taken away her life."

"Then, who gave her the poison?"

"I do not know."

"And cannot even suspect any one?"

"No."

"Good-bye!" he said, as he started up and hurried away; muttering to himself, as the jailer undid the bolts, "Always the same!—the women are always innocent; and yet we see them stretching ropes other than clothes' ropes every now and then."

Defeated, but as little discomfited, as we might gather from his pithy soliloquy, his next step was to double up, as he termed it, the authorities, who, he knew, would never have gone the length of apprehending the woman without having got hold of evidence sufficient to justify Sir William Rae, the Lord Advocate, a considerate and prudent man, that the charge lay heavy on the prisoner. He had no right of access, at this stage, to the names of the intended witnesses; but to a man of his activity it is no difficult matter to find these out, from the natural garrulity of the people, and a kind of self-importance in being a Crown testimony. Then to find them out was next to drawing them out; for it may be safely said for our writer that there was no man, from the time of John Wilkes, who could exercise a more winning persuasion. One by one he ferreted them out, wheedled, threatened, adjured, but found himself resisted in every attempt to break them down or to turn them to him. At every stage of his inquiry he saw the case for the prisoner assuming a dark aspect—as dark, he so termed it, as the face of a hanged culprit.

"The beagles have got a track. There are more foxes in the cover than one; and shall it be said I, David M——, cannot beat out another as stimulating to the nose?"

In a quarter of an hour after having made this observation to himself, he was posting on horseback to the farm of D——, where he arrived in as short a time as he generally took on his journeys.

"I am afraid to ask you for intelligence," said the farmer, as he stood by the horse's side, and addressed the writer, who kept his seat.

"Get me two and five-eighths of a glass of whisky in a jug of milk, and I'll tell you then what I want. I have no time to dismount."

The farmer complied.

"The case looks ugly," said the writer, as he handed back the jug. "These witnesses would hang a calendared saint of a hundred miracles. Are any tramps in the habit of coming about you?"

"Too many."

"Do you know any of them?"

"Scarcely—not by name."

"Any women?—never mind the men," said the writer impatiently.

"Yes; there is one who used to come often; she sold small things."

"Is that all you know of her? Has she no mark, man? Is her nose long or short? no squint, lame leg, or pock-pits?"

"She had usually a small cage, in which she kept a couple of white mice."

"White mice!" ejaculated the writer; "never was a better mark."

"You don't know her name?"

"No; nor do I think any of my present people do."

"When was she here last?"

"About a month ago."

"Anywhere near the time of the girl's death?"

"Ay, just about that time, or maybe a week before."

"And you can give me no trace of her?"

"None whatever, except that I think I saw her take to the east, in the way to Arbroath. But I do not see how she can be of any use."

"I don't want you to see that she can be of any use," said the writer, laughing; "but I want you to hear whereabout she is."

"I will try what I can," said the farmer.

"And let me know by some messenger who can ride as fast as I can." Then adding, "Gilderoy was saved by a brown mouse, which gnawed the string by which the key of the jail door of Forfar hung on a nail, whereby the key fell to the ground, and was pulled by him through an opening at the bottom. Heard you ever the story?"

"No."

"But it's true, nevertheless. What would you say if a white mouse, or two of them, should save the life of your wife?"

"I would say it was wonderful," replied the farmer, with eyes a-goggled by amazement.

"And so would I," answered Mr. M——, as he put the rowels into the side of his horse and began a hard trot, which he would not slacken till he was at the Cowgate port, and not even then, for he made his way generally through the streets of the town with equal rapidity, and always the safer that he was the "fresher."

On arriving at his office he sat down, and, without apparently any premeditation, unless what he had indulged in during his trot, wrote off with his usual rapidity four letters to the following effect:—"Dear Sir,—As agent for Mrs. S——, who now lies in our jail on a charge of murder, I request you will endeavour to find some trace of a woman who goes through the country with a cage and two white mice. Grave suspicions attach to her, as the person who administered the poison, and I wish your energies to be employed in aiding me to search her out." The letters were directed to agents in Arbroath, Forfar, Kirriemuir, and Montrose, and immediately committed to a clerk to be taken to the post-office, with a good-natured laugh on the lips of the writer—and, within the teeth, the little monologue—"The wrinkled skin easily conceals a scar."

From some source or another, probably the true one may be guessed, an uberrima fides began to hang round a report that a new feature had spread over the face of Mrs. S——'s case; and that, in place of her being the guilty person, the culprit was a tramp, with white mice in a cage. Nor were the authorities long in being startled by the report; but where that woman was no one could tell, and a vague report was no foundation for authoritative action. But if it was not for a Lord Advocate to seek out or hunt after white mice, that was no reason why the prisoner's agent should not condescend to so very humble an office; and, accordingly, two days after the despatch of the letters I have mentioned, the same horse that carried the writer on the former occasion, and knew so well the prick of his rowels, was ready saddled at the door of the office. The head of the agent was instantly drawn out of some other deep well of legal truth, some score of directions given to clerks, and he was off on the road to Glammis, but not before some flash had shown him what he was to do when he got there. The same rapid trot was commenced, and continued, to the great diminution of the sap of the animal, until the place he was destined for loomed before him. He now commenced inquiries upon inquiries. Every traveller was questioned, every door got a touch of his whip, until at length he got a trace, and he was again in full pursuit. I think it is Suidas who says that these pretty little animals, called white mice, are very amatory, and have a strong odour, but this must be only to their mates. I doubt if even the nostrils of a writer are equal to this perception, whatever sense they may possess in the case of pigeons with a pluckable covering. But, however this may be, it was soon observable that our pursuer had at least something in his eye. The spurs were active; and, by and by, he drew up at a small road-side change-house, into the kitchen of which he tumbled, without a premonitory question, and there, before him, sat the veritable mistress of these very white mice, spaeing the fortunes of some laughing girls, who saw the illuminated figures of their lovers in the future.[1]

"Can you read me my fortune?" he said, in his own peculiar way.

"Na; I ken ye owre weel," was the quick reply, as she turned a pair of keen, grey eyes on him.

"Well, you'll speak to me at any rate," he said. "I have something to say to you."

And, going into the adjoining parlour, he called for a half-mutchkin. He needed some himself, and he knew the tramp was not an abstainer.

"Tell the woman to come ben," he said, as the man placed the whisky on the table.

"What can you want, Mr. M——, with that old, never-mend vagabond?"

"Perhaps an uncle has left her five hundred pounds," said the writer with a chuckle.

"Gude save us! the creature will go mad," said the man, as he went out, not knowing whether his guest was in humour or earnest.

But, whatever he said to the woman, there she was, presently, white mice and all, seated alongside of the writer, who could make a beggar or a baron at home with him, with equal ease, and in an equally short time.

"You're obliged to me, I think, if I can trust to a pretty long memory," he said, handing her a glass of the spirits.

"Ay; but it doesna need a lang memory to mind gi'en me this," she replied, not wishing any other reason for her obligation.

"And you've forgotten the pirn scrape?"

"The deil's in a lang memory; but I hinna," she replied, with more confidence, for by this time the whisky had disappeared in the accustomed bourne of departed spirits.

"Weel, it's a bad business that at your auld freend's at D——," said he, getting into his Scotch, for familiarity. "Hae ye heard?"

"Wha hasna heard? I kenned the lassie brawly; but I didna like her—she was never gude to a puir cratur like me."

"But they say ye ken mair than ither folk?" said he.

"Maybe I do," replied the woman, getting proud of the impeachment. "Hae we nae lugs and een, ay, and stamachs, like ither folk?"

"And could ye do naething to save this puir woman, the wife o' a gude buirdly man, wi' an open hand to your kin, and the mither o' a family?"

"I care naething about her being the wife o' a man, or the mither o' a family; but I ken what I ken."

"And sometimes what ye dinna ken, when you tell the lasses o' their lovers ye never saw."

"The deil tak their louping hearts into his hand for silly gawkies; if they werena a' red-wood about lads, they wadna heed me a whistle. But though I might try to get Mrs. S——'s head out o' the loop, I wadna like to put my ain in."

"I'll tak gude care o' that," said the writer. "I got ye out o' a scrape before."

"Weel than——"

"And weel than," echoed he.

"And better than weel than; suppose I swore I did it mysel'—and maybe I did; that's no your business—they wadna hang a puir wretch like me for her ain words, wad they, when there's nae proof I did it but my ain tongue?"

"No likely," replied he; "and then a hunder gowden guineas as a present, no as a bribe——"

"I want nae bribes—I gie value for my fortunes. If it's wind, wind is the breath o' life; a present!"

"Would make your een jump," added he, finishing his sentence.

"Jump! ay, loup! Whar are they?"

"You'll get the half when you come into the town, and the other when Mrs. S——is safe. You will ca' at my office on Wednesday; and, after that, I'll tak care o' you. In the meantime, ye maun sell your mice."

"Geordie Cameron offered me five shillings for them; I'll gie them to him."

"No," replied the writer; "no to a man. Ken ye nae woman-tramp will tak them, and show them about as you do?"

"Ou ay; I'll gie them to Meg Davidson, wha's to be here the night. But whaurfor no Geordie?"

"Never ye mind that, I ken the difference; and if Meg doesna give you the five shillings, I will."

"Well, buy them yoursel'," said the woman.

"Done," said he; "there's five guineas for them, and you can gie them to Meg as a present. Now, are ye firm?"

"Firm!" she cried, as she clutched the money, and gave a shrill laugh, from a nerve that was never softened by pity or penitence. "I think nae mair on't, man—sir, I mean, for ye proved yoursel' a gentleman to me afore—than I do now in spaeing twins to your wife at her next doun-lying."

A rap on the table, from the bottom of the pewter measure, brought in the landlord.

"Fill that again," said the writer.

And the man having re-entered with the pewter measure——

"You're to give this woman board and lodging for a day or two, and I will pay you before I start."

"That will be oot o' the five hundred frae her uncle," said the man, laughing. "She's my lady noo; but what will become o' the mice?"

"There's Meg Davidson passing the window e'en noo," said the woman.

"Send her in," said the writer to the change-house keeper.

The woman going under this name was immediately introduced by the man, with a kind of mock formality; for he could not get quit of the impression that his old customer had really succeeded to the five hundred pounds—a sum, in his estimation, sufficiently large to insure respect.

"Maggy," said the writer, "tak this chair, and here's a dram. What think ye?"

"I dinna ken."

"Ye're to get the twa white mice and the cage for naething, and this dram to boot."

Meg's face cleared up like a June sun come out in a burst.

"Na," she said; "ye're joking."

"But it's upon a condition," rejoined he.

"Weel, what is't—that I'm to feed them weel, and keep them clean?"

"You'll do that too," said he, laughing, "for they're valuable creatures, and bonny; but you're to say you've had them for a year."

"For twa, if you like," replied the woman; "a puir fusionless lee that, and no worth sending a body to the deil for."

"Here they are," said the tramp; "and you're to tak care o' them. They've been my staff for mony a day, and they're the only creatures on earth I care for and like; for they never said to me, 'Get out, ye wretch,' or banned me for a witch; but were aye sae happy wi' their pickles o' barley, and maybe a knot o' sugar, when I could get at a farmer's wife's bowl."

Even hags have pathetic moods. Meg was affected; and the writer, having appreciated the virtue, whispered in the ear of his protegée, "Seven o'clock on Wednesday night," and left them to the remainder of the whisky. At the door he settled with the man, and, mounting his horse, which he had ordered a bottle of strong ale for, in addition to his oats, he set off at his old trot.

"Now let the Crown blood-hounds catch Meg Davidson and her mice," he said, as he pushed on.

The writer was, no doubt, bent eagerly for home, but he seldom got to his intended destination, though we have given one or two examples of an uninterrupted course, without undergoing several stoppages, either from the sudden calls of business, which lay in every direction, or the seductions of conviviality, equally ubiquitous; and on this occasion he was hailed from the window of the inn by some ten-tumbler men of Forfar, whose plan for draining the loch, by making toddy of it, had not, to their discomfort, been realized, but who made due retaliation by very clean drainings elsewhere. The moment he heard the shout he understood the meaning thereof, because he knew the house, the locality, and the men; and Meg Davidson and her mice were passed into the wallet-bag of time, till he should give these revellers their satisfaction in a boon companion who could see them under the table, and then mount his horse, with a power of retention of his seat unexampled in a county famous for revolutions of heads as well as of bodies. Dismounting from his horse, he got his dinner, a meal he had expected at Dundee; and, in spite of the distance of fourteen miles which lay before him, he despatched tumbler after tumbler without being once tempted to the imprudence of letting out his extraordinary hunt, but rather with the prudence of sending, through his compotators, to the county town the fact that a woman who perambulated the country with white mice was really the murderer of the country girl. This statement he was able to make, even at that acme of his dithyrambics, when, as usual, he got upon the head of the table to make his speech of the evening. It was now eleven, and he had swallowed eight tumblers, yet he was comparatively steady when he mounted; and, though during the fourteen miles he swung like a well-ballasted barque in a gale of wind, he made sufficient headway to be home by half-past twelve.

Next morning, as ready and able as usual for the work of the day, he was at his desk about eleven, and when engaged with one client, while others were waiting to be despatched in the way in which he alone could discharge clients, he was waited on by a gentleman connected with the Crown Office. Having been yielded a preference, the official took his seat.

"I understand you are employed for Mrs. S——?" he said. "We have thought it necessary, as disinterested protectors of the lives of the king's subjects, to apprehend this woman. I need not say that our precognitions are our guarantee; but I have heard a report which would seem to impugn our discretion, if it do not shame our judgment, insomuch that, if it be true, we have seized the wrong person. Do you know anything of this woman with the white mice, who takes upon herself the burden of a self-accusation? Of course it is for you to help us to her as the salvation of your client."

"Too evident that for a parade of candour," replied Mr. M——. "Her name is Margaret Davidson. Her white companions will identify her. Her residence is where you may chance to find her."

"Very vague, considering your interest," replied the other. "Where did you find her?"

"Ask me first, my dear sir, whether I have found her. Perhaps not. If it is my interest to search her out, it is not less your duty to catch her. A vagrant with white mice is a kenspeckle, and surely you can have no difficulty in tracing her. I need scarcely add, that when you do find her, you will substitute her for my client, and make amends for the disgrace you have brought upon an innocent woman and a respectable family."

"I won't say that," replied the other, shaking his head. "The evidence against Mrs. S—— is too heavy to admit of our believing a vagrant, influenced by the desire of, perhaps, a paid martyrdom, or the excitement of a mania."

"Then, why ask me to help you to find her?"

"For our satisfaction as public officers."

"And to my detriment as a private agent."

"Not at all."

"Yes; if I choose to make her a witness for the defence, and leave the jury to judge of paid martyrdom, or her real madness. Paid martyrdom!—paid by whom?"

"Not necessarily by you."

"But you want me to help you to be able to prove the bribe out of her own mouth, don't you?"

"Of course we would examine her."

"Yes, and cook her; but you must catch her first. Really, my dear sir, a very useful recipe in cuisine; and, hark ye, you can put the mice in the pan also. But, really, I am not bound, and cannot in justice be expected to do more. I have given you her name; and when had a culprit so peculiar and striking a designation as being the proprietor of a peripatetic menagerie?"

"Ridiculous!"

"Yes, ridiculus mus! But are you not the labouring mountain yourself, and do you not wish me to become the midwife?"

"I perceive I can make nothing of you," at length said the gentleman. "You either don't want to save your client, or the means you trust to cannot stand the test."

"God bless my soul!" roared the writer; "must I tell you again that I have given you her name and occupation? Even a cat, with nose-instinct put awry by the colour of the white race of victims, would smell her out."

Bowing the official to the door with these words, he was presently in some other ravelled web, which he disentangled with equal success and apparent ease; but, following him in his great scheme, we find him in the afternoon posting again to the farm. He found the farmer in the same collapse of hope, sitting in the arm-chair so long pressed by his wife, with his chin upon his breast, and his eyes dim and dead. The evidence had got piece by piece to his ear, paralyzing more and more the tissues of his brain; and hope had assumed the character of an impossibility in the moral world of God's government.

"You must cheer up," said the writer. "Come, some milk and whisky. Move about; I have got good news for you, but cannot trust you."

The head of the man was raised up, and a slight beam was, as it were, struck from his eye by the jerk of a sudden impulse. His step, as he moved to gratify the agent, seemed to have acquired even a spring.

"Why are you here," he said, as he brought the indispensable jug, with something even more than the five-eighths of the spiritual element added to the two glasses, "if you cannot tell me the grounds of my hope? I could not comprehend what you meant about the woman and the white mice."

"Nor do I want you to understand it; it is enough if I do," replied Mr. M——, as he put the jug to his mouth; "but this I want you to understand, in the first place, that I want an order for fifty pounds from you."

The farmer was too happy to write an order for any amount within the limits of his last farthing, and getting pen and ink, he wrote the cheque.

"And you couldn't tell me the name of the woman with the mice; but I can tell you," he continued. "It is Margaret Davidson; and, hark ye—come near me, man—if you are called upon by any one with the appearance of a sheriff's beagle, or whatever he may be like, for the name of that woman, say it is Margaret Davidson, and that they will find her between Lerwick and Berwick. Do you comprehend?"

"Perfectly."

"And, moreover, you are to tell every living soul within ear-shot, servants or strangers, that it was that very woman who gave the dose to the lass, and that the woman herself does not deny it."

"Gude Lord! but is all this true, Mr. M——?"

"Is it true your wife did it, then, you d——d idiot?" cried the writer, using thus one of his most familiar terms, but with perfect good-nature. "Don't you in your heart—or hope, at any rate—think the Lord Advocate a liar? and has his lordship a better right to lie than I or Meg Davidson? Isn't the world a great leavened lump of lies from the Cape of Good Hope to the Cape of Wrath? And you want your wife hanged, because the nose of truth is out of joint a bit! Ay, what though it were cut off altogether, if you get your wife's back without being coloured blue by the hangman? But, I tell you, it's not a lie: the woman with the white mice says it of her own accord."

"Wonderful! the woman with the white mice!"

"The woman with the white mice!" echoed the writer.

And, getting again upon his legs, he hurried out, throwing back his injunctions upon S—— to obey his instructions. In a few minutes more he was again upon the road, leaving the clatter of his horse's hoofs to mingle with the confused thoughts of his mystified client. Arrived at the High Street, where, as used to be said of him, he could not be ten minutes without having seized some five or six persons by the breast of the coat, and put as many questions on various matters of business, just as the thought struck him on the instant, he pounced upon one, no other than the confidential clerk of the fiscal.

"I say, man," seizing and holding him in the usual way, "have you catched the woman yet?"

"What woman?" replied the clerk.

"The woman with the white mice."

"Oh," cried the young man, "we have no faith in that quarter—a mere get-up; but we're looking about for her, notwithstanding."

"Well, tell your master that Meg Davidson was last seen on the Muir of Rannoch, and that the Highlanders in that outlandish quarter, having never seen white mice before, are in a state of perfect amazement."

A bolt at some other person left the clerk probably in as great amazement as the Highlanders; but our man of the law did not stop to see the extent of it. All his avocations, however, did not prevent the coming round of that seven o'clock on Wednesday evening, which he had appointed as the hour of meeting with the woman on whom his hopes of saving his client almost altogether rested. He was at his desk at the hour, and the woman, no doubt eager for the phenomenon of the "louping ee," was as true as the time itself. The writer locked the door of his office, and drawing her as near him as possible, inquired first whether any knew she was in town.

"Deil are," she replied; "naebody cares for me ony mair than I were an auld glandered spavin, ready for the knackers."

"And you've been remembering a' ye are to say?"

Now, the woman did not answer this question immediately. She had been, for some days, busy in the repository of her memory—a crazy box of shattered spunk-wood, through the crevices of which came the lurid lights sent from another box, called the imagination, and such was the close intimacy, or rather mixture, of the revelations of these two magic centres, that they could not be distinguished from one another; but the habit of fortune-telling had so quickened the light of the one, as to make it predominate over, and almost extinguish that of the other, so that she was at a loss to get a stray glimmer of the memory, to make her ready, on the instant, for the answer.

"Remembering! Ay," she said, "there's no muckle to remember. The lass was under the burden of shame, and couldna bear it: she wanted some doctor's trash to tak that burden aff her, if it should carry her life alang wi' 't. I got the stuff, and the woman dee'd."

All which was carefully written down—but the writer had his own way of doing his work. He would have day and date, the place where the doctor's trash was bought, the price thereof, the manner of administering the same, and many other particulars, every one of which was so carefully recorded, that the whole, no doubt, looked like a veritable precognition of facts, got from the said box called the memory, as if it had been that not one tint of light, from the conterminous chamber, had mixed with the pure spirit of truth.

"Now," said he, "regaining his English, when his purpose was served, "you'll stand firm to this, in the face of judge, jury, justice, and all her angels?"

"Never ye fear."

"Then, you will go with me to a private lodging, where I wish you to remain, seen by as few as you can. You're a widow; your name is Mrs. Anderson; your husband was drowned in the Maelstrom. Get weeds, a veil, and look respectable."

"A' save the last, for that's impossible."

"Try; and, as you will need to pay for your board and lodgings, and your dress, here's the sum I promised ye; the other half when Mrs. S—— is saved."

"A' right; and did I no say my ee would loup?—but 'ae gude turn deserves anither,' as the deil said to the loon o' Culloden, when he hauled him doun, screaming, to a place ye maybe ken o', and whaur I hae nae wish to be."

"Where is Meg Davidson?" he then asked.

"Oh ay!" she replied, "that puts me in mind o' a man wha met me on the road, and asked me if I was the woman wi' the twa white mice? I tauld him she was awa east to Montrose, and sae it is."

"Not a cheep of the sale," added he.

"Na, na, nor o' ony thing else, but just Mrs. Anderson, the widow, whase man was drouned in the Maelstream."

And, having thus finished, the writer led the woman to her place of safety, there to lie in retentis till the court-day.

That eventful day came round. In the meantime, the prosecution never got access to the real white mouse tramp, and whatever they got out of Meg Davidson, satisfied them that she knew nothing of the murder. Large sums were given to secure the services of Jeffrey, then in the full blaze of his power, and Cockburn, so useful in examinations. The Lord Advocate led his proof, which was no darker than our writer had ascertained it to be, when he found himself driven to his clever expedient. The proof for the defence began; and, after some other witnesses were examined, the name of the woman with the white mice was called by the macer; and here occurred a circumstance, at the time known to very few. Cockburn turned round to our country agent, who was sitting behind him, and said, in a whisper—

"M——, if the angel Gabriel were at this moment to come down and blow a trumpet, and tell me that what this woman is going to swear to is truth, I would not believe her."

Nor is there any doubt to be entertained that the woman's testimony took the court and the audience by surprise. The judges looked at each other, and the jury were perplexed. There was only one thing that produced any solicitude in our writer. He feared the Lord Advocate would lay hands upon her, as either a murderer or a perjurer, the moment she left the witness-box. At that instant was he prepared. Quietly slipping out, he got hold of the woman, led her to the outer door, through a crowd, called to the door-keeper, who stood sentry, to open for the purpose of letting in a fresh witness of great importance to the accused; and having succeeded, as he seldom failed, he got the woman outside. A cab was in readiness—no time lost—the woman was pushed in, followed by her guardian, and in a short time was safely disposed of. Meanwhile, the Crown authorities had been preparing their warrant, and the woman was only saved from their mercies by a very few minutes.

It is well known, as I have already mentioned, that Jeffrey's speech for Mrs. S—— was the greatest of all modern orations, yet it was delivered under peculiar circumstances. When he rose and began, he seemed languid and unwell. The wonted sparkle was not seen in his eye, the usually compressed lip was loose and flaccid, and his words, though all his beginnings were generally marked with a subdued tone, came with difficulty. Cockburn looked at him inquiringly, anxious and troubled. There was something wrong, and those interested in the defence augured ominously. All of a sudden the little man stopped, fixed his eye on one of the walls of the court-room, and cried out, "Shut that window." Through that opening a cold wind had been blowing-upon and chilling a body which, though firm and compact, was thin, wiry, and delicately toned to the refined requirements of the spirit that animated and moved it with a grace peculiarly his own. The chill, in consonance with well-known pathological laws, produced first depression, and then a feverish reaction, which latter was even morbidly favourable to the development of his powers. He began to revive; the blood, pulsing with more than natural activity, warmed still more at the call of his enthusiasm. He analyzed every part of the cause, tore up the characters of the prosecutor's witnesses, held up microscopic flaws, and passed them through the lens of his ingenious exaggeration, till they appeared serious in the eyes of the jury. Then how touching, if not noble, was the conduct of that strange witness for the defence—who, a wretched criminal herself, would yet, under a secret power, so far expiate her guilt by offering herself as a sacrifice for innocence! Beyond all was the pathos of his peroration, where he brought home the case to the jury, as loving husbands of loving wives, and tender fathers of beloved children. A woman sat there before them—a wife and a mother. She had undergone an ordeal not much less trying than death itself, and even then she was trembling under the agony of suspense, extended beyond mortal powers of endurance—to be terminated by the breath of their mouths, either for life and a restoration to a previously happy family, or for a death on a gallows, with all its ignominy.

That speech, which nearly cost Jeffrey his life, saved that of another. The jury found the libel not proven; Mrs. S—— was free; Jeffrey was made more famous; but no one ever heard more of the woman with the white mice.