Oldal 272 [272]
208
not have about him the means of antici¬
pating the law ; this ceremony performed,
they led him to one of the condemned
cells, and left him there—alone.
the door, which served for seat and bed¬
stead, and casting his bloodshot eyes upon
the ground, tried to collect his thoughts.
disjointed fragments of what the judge
had said, though it had seemed to him at
the time that he could not hear a word.
These gradually fell into their proper
places, and, by degrees, suggested more,
almost as it was delivered. To be hanged
by the neck till he was dead — that was
the end. To be hanged by the neck till
he was dead.
As it came on very dark, he began to
think of all the men he had known who
had died upon the scaflold—some of them
through his means. They rose up in such
quick succession that he could hardly
count them. He had seen some of them
die—and joked too, because they died
with prayers upon their lips. With what
a rattling noise the drop went down ; and
how suddenly they changed from strong
and vigorous men to dangling heaps of
clothes!
Some of them might have inhabited
that very cell—sat upon that very spot.
It was very dark; why did’nt they bring
a light? The cell had been built for
many years—scores of men must have
passed their last hours there—it was like
sitting in a vault strewn with dead bodies
—the cap, the noose,—the pinioned arms
—the faces that he knew even beneath
that hideous veil—Light, light!
At length, when his hands were raw
with beating against the heavy door and
walls, two men appeared, one bearing a
candle which he thrust into an iron can¬
dlestick fixed against the wall, and the
other dragging in a mattress on which to
pass the night; for the prisoner was to
be left alone no more.
Then came night—dark, dismal, silent
night. Other wretches are glad to hear
the church-clocks strike, for they tell of
life and coming day. To the Jew they
brought despair. The boom of every iron
bell came laden with the one deep hollow
sound —death. What availed the noise
and bust.e of cheerful morning, which
penetrated even there, to him? It was
another fortu of knell, with mockery add¬
ed to che warning.
The day passed off—day, there was no
day; it was gone as soon as come —and
night came on again; night so long, and
yet so short; long in its dreadful silence,
and short in its fleeting hours. One time
he raved and blasphemed, and at another
howled and tore his hair. Venerable men
of his own persuasion had come to pray
beside him, but he had driven them away
with curses. They renewed their chari¬
table efforts, and he beat them off.
Saturday night! he had only one night
more to live. And as he thought of this,
the day broke—Sunday. It was not until
the night of this last awful day, that a
withering sense of his helpless, desperate
state came in its full intensity upon his
blighted soul; not that he had ever held
any defined or positive hopes of mercy,
but that he had never been able to con¬
sider more than the dim probability of
dying so soon. He had spoken little to
either of the two men who relieved each
other in their attendance upon him, and
they, for their parts, made no effort to
rouse his attention. He had sat there
awake, but dreaming. Now he started
up every minute, and with gasping mouth
and burning skin hurried to and fro in
such a paroxysm of fear and wrath that
even they—used to such sights—recoiled
from him with horror. He grew so ter¬
rible at last in all the tortures of his evil
conscience, that one man could not bear
to sit there, eyeing him alone, and so the
two kept watch together.
He cowered down upon his stone bed,
and thought of the past. He had been
wounded with some missiles from the
crowd on the day of his capture, and his
head was bandaged with a linen cloth.
His red hair hung down upon his blood¬
less face; his beard was torn and twisted
into knots; his eyes shone with a terrible
light ; his unwashed flesh crackled with the
fever that burnt him up. Eight—nine—
ten. If it was not a trick to frighten
him, and those were the real hours tread¬
ing on each others’ heels, where would he
be when they came round again! Eleven.
Another struck ere the voice of the hour
before had ceased to vibrate. At eight
he would be the only mourner in his own
Those dreadful walls of Newgate,
which have hidden so much misery and
such unspeakable anguish—not only from
the eyes, but too often and too long from
the thoughts of men, never held so dread
a spectacle as that. The few who lin¬
gered as they passed, and wondered what
the man was doing who was to be hanged
to-morrow, would have slept but il] that
night, if they could have seen him then.