the crowd below, then, allowing the rope to be adjusted with utter carelessness, was launched into the air, and died seemingly without a struggle.
The black cloud, which had been sailing on, now burst, the rain came down in torrents, the crowd rapidly dispersed; and in half an hour, the moor, which had been like a vast plain of human faces, was silent and solitary—there remained only the dark gibbet high in mid-air, and the two bodies swung violently to and fro by the fierce wind.
Towards evening the fitful gleam of the lantern, and the red glare of the torch, fell upon a small, sullen-looking group of the law's officials: the hangman was among them, and his harsh, malignant face given fully to view. Hastily they dug a hole, and at the foot of the gallows buried the wretched woman; but the body of the man was made fast in chains, and left for the scorching sun, the withering wind, and the birds of prey, to preserve or to destroy. The torches were extinguished; a flickering light from the lantern shone for a while over the scene—gradually diminishing, till it finally disappeared. Long was it before human step ventured across the dismal and deserted moor.
About a week after the execution, two circumstances occurred which tended greatly to criminate the man and exculpate his wife. All the missing articles of Mrs. Bird's property were found in a hollow tree, deep in the hazel thicket, tied up in an old yellow handkerchief, which the villagers re-
