When Jack entered the cell, she was talking to herself in the muttering unconnected way peculiar to her distracted condition; but, after her eye had rested on him some time, the fixed expression of her features relaxed, and a smile crossed them.  This smile was more harrowing even than her former rigid look.

“You are an angel,” she cried, with a look beaming with delight.

“Rather a devil,” groaned her son, “to have done this.”

“You are an angel, I say,” continued the poor maniac; “and my Jack would have been like you, if he had lived.  But he died when he was a child—­long ago—­long ago—­long ago.”

“Would he had done so!” cried Jack.

“Old Van told me if he grew up he would be hanged.  He showed me a black mark under his ear, where the noose would be tied.  And so I’ll tell you what I did—­”

And she burst into a laugh that froze Jack’s blood in his veins.

“What did you do?” he asked, in a broken voice.

“I strangled him—­ha! ha! ha!—­strangled him while he was at my breast—­ha! ha!”—­And then with a sudden and fearful change of look, she added, “That’s what has driven me mad, I killed my child to save him from the gallows—­oh! oh!  One man hanged in a family is enough.  If I’d not gone mad, they would have hanged me.”

“Poor soul!” ejaculated her son.

“I’ll tell you a dream I had last night,” continued the unfortunate being.  “I was at Tyburn.  There was a gallows erected, and a great mob round it—­thousands of people, and all with white faces like corpses.  In the midst of them there was a cart with a man in it—­and that man was Jack—­my son Jack—­they were going to hang him.  And opposite to him, with a book in his hand,—­but it couldn’t be a prayer-book,—­sat Jonathan Wild, in a parson’s cassock and band.  I knew him in spite of his dress.  And when they came to the gallows, Jack leaped out of the cart, and the hangman tied up Jonathan instead—­ha! ha!  How the mob shouted and huzzaed—­and I shouted too—­ha! ha! ha!”

“Mother!” cried Jack, unable to endure this agonizing scene longer.  “Don’t you know me, mother?”

“Ah!” shrieked Mrs. Sheppard.  “What’s that?—­Jack’s voice!”

“It is,” replied her son.

“The ceiling is breaking! the floor is opening! he is coming to me!” cried the unhappy woman.

“He stands before you,” rejoined her son.

“Where?” she cried.  “I can’t see him.  Where is he?”

“Here,” answered Jack.

“Are you his ghost, then?”

“No—­no,” answered Jack.  “I am your most unhappy son.”

“Let me touch you, then; let me feel if you are really flesh and blood,” cried the poor maniac, creeping towards him on all fours.

Jack did not advance to meet her.  He could not move; but stood like one stupified, with his hands clasped together, and eyes almost starting out of their sockets, fixed upon his unfortunate parent.