47737 'Yes, sir, my name was Selden, and he is my younger brother.
47738 We humoured him too much when he was a lad, and gave him his own way in everything, until he came to think that the world was made for his pleasure, and that he could do what he liked in it.
47739 Then, as he grew older, he met wicked companions, and the devil entered into him until he broke my mother's heart and dragged our name in the dirt.
47740 From crime to crime he sank lower and lower, until it is only the mercy of God which has snatched him from the scaffold, but to me, sir, he was always the little curly-headed boy that I had nursed and played with, as an elder sister would.
47741 That was why he broke prison, sir.
47742 He knew that I was here, and that we could not refuse to help him.
47743 When he dragged himself here one night, weary and starving, with the warders hard at his heels, what could we do?
47744 We took him in and fed him and cared for him.
47745 Then you returned, sir, and my brother thought he would be safer on the moor than anywhere else until the hue and cry was over, so he lay in hiding there.
47746 But every second night we made sure if he was still there by putting a light in the window, and if there was an answer my husband took out some bread and meat to him.
47747 Every day we hoped that he was gone, but as long as he was there we could not desert him.
47748 That is the whole truth, as I am an honest Christian woman, and you will see that if there is blame in the matter it does not lie with my husband, but with me, for whose sake he has done all that he has.'
47749 The woman's words came with an intense earnestness which carried conviction with them.