The String of Pearls (1850), p. 165

Gentlemen, it will be everything, if this lad recovers sufficiently to be a witness against his rascal of a master, for that is just what we want. However, from the account you give me of him, I am very much afraid the poor fellow's mind is too severely affected."
"That, too, is our fear."
"Well, we must do the best we can, and I should advise that when he awakens some one should be by him with whose voice, as a friendly sound, he will be familiar?"
"Who can we get?"
"His poor mother."
"Ah, yes, I will set about that at once."
"Leave it to me," said Sir Richard Blunt, "leave that to me—I know where to find Mrs. Ragg, and what's best to say to her in the case. Let me see, in about four hours from now probably Tobias may be upon the point of recovery."
"Most probably."
"Then, sir, expect me at your house in that time with Mrs. Ragg. I wil take care that the old lady's mind is put completely at ease, so that she will aid us in any respect to bring about the recovery of her son, who no doubt has suffered severely from some plan of Todd's to put him out of the way. That seems to me to be the most likely solution to the mystery of his present condition. Todd, I am convinced," said Colonel Jeffery, "would stop at no villany."
"Certainly not. My own belief is, that he is so steeped to the lips in crime, that he sees no other mode of covering his misdeeds already done than by the commission of new ones. But his career is nearly at an end, gentlemen."
The colonel and the captain took the rising of the magistrate from his chair as a polite hint that he had something else to do than to gossip with them any longer,
and they took their leave, after expressing again to him how much they appreciated his exertions.
"If the mystery of the fate of my unhappy friend," said the colonel, "is ever cleared up, it will be by your exertion, Sir Richard, and he and I, and society at large, will owe to you a heavy debt of gratitude for unmasking so horrible a villain as Sweeney Todd, for that he is such no one can doubt."

CHAPTER XXXIII.

JOHANNA WALKS ABROAD IN DISGUISE.

But, amid all the trials, and perplexities, and anxieties that beset the dramatis personae of our story, who suffered like Johanna? What heart bled as her's bled? What heart heaved with sad emotion as her's heaved? Alas! poor Johanna, let the fate of Mark Ingestrie be what it might, he could not feel the pangs that tore thy gentle heart. Truly might she have said—

"Man's love is of his life a thing apart
'Tis woman's whole existence,'

for she felt that her joy—her life itself, was bartered for the remembrance of how she had been loved by him whose fate was involved in one of the most painful and most inscrutable of mysteries. Where could she seek for consolation, where for hope? The horizon of her young life seemed ever darkening, and the more she gazed upon it with the fond hope of singing—

"The first faint star of coming joy,"

the more confounded her gentle spirit became by the blackness of despair. It is sad indeed that the young, the good, and the gentle, should be the grand sufferers in this world, but so it is. The exquisite capacity to feel acutely is certain to find