sow the first seeds of compassionate and humane feeling among those who
had hitherto expressed and felt nothing but indignation towards the
prisoners.

The judge upon the bench, the counsel at the bar, and the jury
impannelled in their box, felt the force of the appeal; and it softened
down the evil impression created by the address of Hawkhurst against the
youthful Francisco. The eyes of all were now directed towards the one
doubly accused--accused not only by the public prosecutor, but even by
his associate in crime,--and the survey was favourable. They
acknowledged that he was one whose personal qualities might indeed
challenge the love of woman in his pride, and her lament in his
disgrace; and as their regard was directed towards him, the sun, which
had been obscured, now pierced through a break in the mass of clouds,
and threw a portion of his glorious beams from a window opposite upon
him, and him alone, while all the other prisoners who surrounded him
were buried more or less in deep shadow. It was at once evident that
his associates were bold yet commonplace villains--men who owed their
courage, their only virtue perhaps, to their habits, to their physical
organisation, or the influence of those around them. They were mere
human butchers, with the only adjunct that, now that the trade was to be
exercised upon themselves, they could bear it with sullen apathy--a
feeling how far removed from true fortitude! Even Hawkhurst, though
more commanding than the rest, with all his daring mien and scowl of
defiance, looked nothing more than a distinguished ruffian. With the
exception of Francisco, the prisoners had wholly neglected their
personal appearance; and in them the squalid and sordid look of the
mendicant seemed allied with the ferocity of the murderer.

Francisco was not only an exception, but formed a beautiful contrast to
the others; and as the evening beams lighted up his figure, he stood at
the bar, if not with all the splendour of a hero of romance, certainly a
most picturesque and interesting personage, elegantly if not richly
attired.

The low sobs at intervals repeated, as if impossible to be checked,
seemed to rouse and call him to a sense of the important part which he
was called upon to act in the tragedy there and then performing. His
face was pale, yet composed; his mien at once proud and sorrowful: his
eye was bright, yet his glance was not upon those in court, but far
away, fixed, like