eyes, such trembling limbs, instinctively seeking support!

"Did you know Mr. Carson as now lies dead?" continued the merciless
woman. "Folk say you did, and knew him but too well. And that for
the sake of such as you, my precious child shot yon chap. But he
did not. I know he did not. They may hang him, but his mother will
speak to his innocence with her last dying breath."

She stopped more from exhaustion than want of words. Mary spoke,
but in so changed and choked a voice that the old woman almost
started. It seemed as if some third person must be in the room, the
voice was so hoarse and strange.

"Please say it again. I don't quite understand you. What has Jem
done? Please to tell me."

"I never said he had done it. I said, and I'll swear, that he never
did do it. I don't care who heard 'em quarrel, or if it is his gun
as were found near the body. It's not my own Jem as would go for to
kill any man, choose how a girl had jilted him. My own good Jem, as
was a blessing sent upon the house where he was born." Tears came
into the mother's burning eyes as her heart recurred to the days
when she had rocked the cradle of her "first-born"; and then,
rapidly passing over events, till the full consciousness of his
present situation came upon her, and perhaps annoyed at having shown
any softness of character in the presence of the Delilah who had
lured him to his danger, she spoke again, and in a sharp tone.

"I told him, and told him to leave off thinking on thee; but he
wouldn't be led by me. Thee! wench! thou wert not good enough to