The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 336: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER XXX THE CORPSE — THE SECRET CHAMBER WE must now go back for a few hours, in order to give some necessary explanations. The Buttoner, as the reader may already have understood, was indeed profoundly stricken with remorse for the share he had taken in the murder of Nell Gibson. Since the perpetration of that crime, many months back, he had become altogether an altered being, abandoning his old companions, wandering about the country, desolate and miserable, like a lost and starved dog, and not having even the spirit to follow his wonted avocations of thimble-rigging in order to procure his bread. The image of Nell Gibson never ceased to haunt him. It followed him about by day, it stood by him at night, wherever he lay down to rest. At length, so terrible became his thoughts, so deep his compunction, that he grew reckless of life; and in process of time the whispering of conscience suggested that the only means of procuring peace for his soul was to make an atonement by a full confession to the proper authorities. In this mood had he returned to London, at the time of which we have been speaking in preceding chapters; and instinctively bending his way toward Mrs. Young’s abode, the place where he had last dwelt in company with Nell Gibson, he chanced to meet old Mother Franklin in the immediate vicinage. To her he at once revealed the fate of the young woman, the remorse that he had experienced, and the determination to which he had come. It was while thus discoursing that they had been noticed and partially overheard by Bencull, as the reader has already seen. Fear- ing, therefore, that some suspicion of his intent might have been excited in the mind of that man, the Buttoner resolved 310 : CORNICE HOO C@