favour more to beg; which is, that your lordship would please to
allow me a little time till I can settle my affairs and make my
peace with God"; to which Mr. Baron Legge feelingly replied, "To be
sure, you shall have a proper time allowed you." So, amid the tense
stillness of the crowded "house," the curtain fell upon the great
fourth act of the tragedy of "The Fair Parricide."

On leaving the hall to be taken back to prison, Mary Blandy, we
read, "stepped into the Coach with as little Concern as if she had
been going to a Ball"--the eighteenth century reporter anticipating
by a hundred years his journalistic successor's phrase as to the
demeanour of Madeleine Smith in similar trying circumstances. The
result of the trial had preceded her to Oxford Castle, where she
found the keeper's family "in some Disorder, the Children being all
in Tears" at the fatal news. "Don't mind it," said their indomitable
guest, "What does it signify? I am very hungry; pray, let me have
something for supper as speedily as possible"; and our reporter
proceeds to spoil his admirable picture by condescending upon
"Mutton Chops and an Apple Pye."

The six weeks allowed her to prepare for death were all too short for
the correspondence and literary labours in which she presently became
involved. On 7th March "a Reverend Divine of Henley-upon-Thames,"
probably, from other evidence, the Rev. William Stockwood, rector of
the parish, addressed to her a letter, exhorting her to confession and
repentance. To this Miss Blandy replied on the 9th, maintaining that
she had acted innocently. "There is an Account," she tells him, "as
well as I was able to write, which I sent to my Uncle in London, that
I here send you." Copies of these letters, and of the narrative
referred to, are printed in the Appendix. She sends her "tenderest