The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 153: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

126 THE COURT OF LONDON to the scaffold, they have pinioned me, they have fastened the noose around my neck, they have drawn the white cap over my face— _ Oh, I cannot breathe, they are suffocating me, and now they have stood me upon the drop, — horror! horror! I hear the bolt giving way — _ Stop, I will confess! a moment! a single moment! Chaplain, a word in your ear — Hark! listen! This is what you must do: take a crowbar, raise the central flagstone in the back kitchen, and there, buried deep, deep, beneath the mould, you will find the two murdered men! But, ah!” shrieked forth the dying maniac, his whole form convulsing horribly, and his eyes ready to start out of his livid, hideous face, “ this is treachery — infernal treachery! Have I not confessed? Have I not told you where the bodies lie? And yet you leave me here upon the drop, with the noose around my neck and the cap over my countenance. Hell! fiends! maledictions! You are going to hang me after all, horror! horror! the bolt is drawing back, the drop is slipping beneath my feet — O God!” And with a tremendous convulsion that made the bed creak and even the very room shake perceptibly, the wretched man gave up the ghost. Half-senseless with the awful consternation that was upon her, Mrs. Brace lay back in the armchair; and she had only a dimly vacant idea that her accomplice in crime had breathed his last. Twice did the medical man whisper to her that he was dead, ere she seemed thoroughly to comprehend him; and then, all in a moment, a singular revulsion of feeling took place within her. A sensation of relief suddenly superseded that tremendous terror and blank despair which had almost crushed both her physical and moral energies, and as she said to herself, ‘‘ My persecutor and tyrant is no more — I am now free!”’ it seemed as if a load were lifted from her mind and she had regained a lost independence. This abruptly revived sense of security armed her with a proportionate courage and presence of mind; and, rising from the chair, she flung a rapid look upon the livid and distorted countenance of the corpse. Its appearance was horrible in the extreme. The eyes, stony and glaring in death’s awful vacancy, seemed ready to start from the head, the tongue lolled out, and around the mouth were large flakes of foam speckled with blood. GOmicdoc “S$ (E()