All the same I am astonished that no one has thought it worth while to make a volume of these dramatic episodes, which are clearly the work of Borrow, and owe nothing to the innumerable pamphlets and chap-books that he brought into use.

Take such an episode as that of Schening and Harlin, two young German women, one of whom pretended to have murdered her infant in the presence of the other because she madly supposed that this would secure them bread--and they were starving.

The trial, the scene at the execution, the confession on the scaffold of the misguided but innocent girl, the respite, and then the execution--these make up as thrilling a narrative as is contained in the pages of fiction.

Assuredly Borrow did not spare himself in that race round the bookstalls of London to find the material which the grasping Sir Richard Phillips required from him.

He found, for example, Sir Herbert Croft's volume, _Love and Madness_, the supposed correspondence of Parson Hackman and Martha Reay, whom he murdered.