is a point in suffering at which the soul becomes insensible of
it. While waiting for the verdict, Sybil had gradually passed into an
abnormal state, which, without being a dream, resembled one. Her spirit
was snatched away from the present scene. She was in the village church,
and not in the court-room. The Judge on the bench was her old pastor in
his pulpit. He was preaching, she thought; but something ailed her head,
for she could not understand the drift of his discourse. And the church
was so crowded, that she felt half-suffocated in it.

Amid the breathless, pulseless silence, the doom of death was spoken.

Not one word of it all did Sybil comprehend. But she felt as if the
evening service was over, and the people were rising to leave the
church.

"Come, Lyon," she breathed, with a deep sigh, "it is over at last, and
oh! I am so tired! Take me home."

Take her home! Alas for the heart-broken husband! He would have given
his own body to be burned to death, if by doing so he could have taken
her home. But he knew that, in all human probability, she could never go
home again.

"One moment, darling," he whispered, and sat her down again to await the
action of the sheriff.

Mr. Fortescue soon came up.

"Mr. Berners," he said, in a broken voice, "I am an old man, and I had
rather die than do my present duty."

"Oh, do what must be done, do it at once, do it yourself, for no one
else would do it so kindly," answered Lyon Berners.

"You know where I must take her?"

"Certainly."

"Then draw her arm through your own and follow me. She will go more
quietly with you than with me," said the sheriff.

They had spoken in a very low tone, in order to spare Sybil, though they
scarcely needed to have taken the precaution; for she was paying no
attention to anything that was passing around her. She sat leaning back,
with a look of utter weariness and stupor on her beautiful, pale face.

He raised her up, drew her hand through his arm, and whispered:

"Come, my darling, we are going now."

This roused her a little. She looked around for her party, and saw
Beatrix Pendleton sitting with her face buried in her handkerchief, as
she had sat since the rendering of the verdict.

"Look, she is asleep. I don't wonder; it is very tiresome, and I'm
almost asleep myself," murmured Sybil, wearily gazing on her friend.

At that moment Captain Pendleton came up.

"Wake her, Clement, and bring her after us. You will both com