hem
expressionless.

"How say you, gentlemen of the jury--guilty or not guilty?"

"Guilty!"

Amid dead silence the word fell. Every heart thrilled with awe but
one. The condemned man sat staring at them with an awful, dull, glazed
stare.

The judge arose and put on his black cap, his face white, his lips
trembling.

Only the last words seemed to strike him--to crash into his whirling
brain with a noise like thunder.

"And that there you be hanged by the neck until dead, and may the Lord
have mercy upon your soul!"

He sat down. The awful silence was something indescribable. One or
two women in the gallery fainted, then the hush was broken in a
blood-curdling manner.

CHAPTER XXXII.

SYBILLA'S TRIUMPH.

It was the night before the execution. In his feebly lighted cell the
condemned man sat alone, trying to read by the palely glimmering lamp.
The New Testament lay open before him, and on this, the last night of
his life, he was reading the story of Gethsemane and Calvary. On this
last night heart and soul were at rest, and an infinite calm illumined
every feature.

Weeks had passed since the day when sentence of death had been
pronounced upon him, and the condemned man had lain burning in the wild
delirium of brain fever.

Sybilla Silver had been his most sleepless, his most devoted attendant.
Her evidence had wrung his heart--had condemned him to the most
shameful death man can die; but she had only told the truth, and truth
is mighty and will prevail. So she came and nursed him now, forgetting
to eat or sleep in her zeal and devotion, and finally wooed him back to
life and reason, while those who loved him best prayed God, by night
and by day, that he might die.

But, while hovering in the "Valley of the Shadow," death had lost all
its terror for him--he rose a changed man.

"And she is there," he said, with his eyes fixed dreamily on the one
patch of blue May sky he could see between his prison bars--"my
wronged, my murdered, my beloved wife! Ah, yes, death is the highest
boon the judges of this world can give me now!"

And so the last night came. He sat alone. The jailer who was to share
his cell on this last, awful vigil had been bribed to leave him by
himself until the latest moment.

"Come in before midnight," he said, smiling slightly, "and guard me
while I sleep, if you wish. Until then, I should like to be left quite
alone."

And the man obeyed, awed unutterably by the