⟨3⟩
ized by dexterity and skilful depravity than another, he was sure to be rewarded by the caresses and applause of this ⟨most⟩ abandoned and most unnatural woman. Such being the footlag on which this unfortunate young man was placed at home, it would be endless to relate all his petty depredations and misdeeds; suffice it to say, that he was some years ago banished forth from the County of Renfrew for stealing an anvil and a cart wheel from a smith in Mearns, but it was never known by what means he succeeded in making away with the anvil, as it would have required three men at least to have removed it to any considerable distance. At another period of his guilty career he was banished from Glasgow for theft; and on the 12th May, 1826, he was tried at the CircuitCourt here for robbing a man of the sum of L.2 3s., but escaped by a verdict of Not Proven. The danger he had escaped was immediately forgot, and any slight impression which had been made by his long confinement—the ceremony and solemnity of the trial—and the doubts and uncertainty he felt regarding his fate, were speedily effaced by the derision with which his fears and his better feelings were always treated by his cruel and unrelenting parent—she goaded him on in his guilty and unreflecting career, until the commission of the deed which brought him to the gallows.
With this depraved young man, Bell M'Me-
