r than mingled, in the decaying--the mouldering body!

The Day of Trial came, and all labour was suspended in the parish, as if
it had been a mourning fast. Hundreds of people from this remote
district poured into the circuit-town, and besieged the court-house.
Horsemen were in readiness, soon as the verdict should be returned, to
carry the intelligence--of life or death--to all those glens. A few
words will suffice to tell the trial, the nature of the evidence, and
its issue. The prisoner, who stood at the bar in black, appeared--though
miserably changed from a man of great muscular power and activity, a
magnificent man, into a tall thin shadow--perfectly unappalled; but in a
face so white, and wasted, and woe-begone, the most profound
physiognomist could read not one faintest symptom either of hope or
fear, trembling or trust, guilt or innocence. He hardly seemed to belong
to this world, and stood fearfully and ghastlily conspicuous between the
officers of justice, above all the crowd that devoured him with their
eyes, all leaning towards the bar to catch the first sound of his voice,
when to the indictment he should plead "Not Guilty." These words he did
utter, in a hollow voice altogether passionless, and then was suffered
to sit down, which he did in a manner destitute of all emotion. During
all the many long hours of his trial, he never moved head, limbs, or
body, except once, when he drank some water, which he had not asked for,
but which was given to him by a friend. The evidence was entirely
circumstantial, and consisted of a few damning facts, and of many of the
very slightest sort, which, taken singly, seemed to mean nothing, but
which, when considered all together, seemed to mean something against
him--how much or how little, there were among the agitated audience many
differing opinions. But slight as they were, either singly or together,
they told fearfully against the prisoner, when connected with the fatal
few which no ingenuity could ever explain away; and though ingenuity did
all it could do, when wielded by eloquence of the highest order--and as
the prisoner's counsel sat down, there went a rustle and a buzz through
the court, and a communication of looks and whispers, that seemed to
denote that there were hopes of his acquittal--yet, if such hopes there
were, they were deadened by the recollection of the calm, clear, logical
address to the jury by the counsel for the crown, and destroyed by the
judge'