rely pass by,
One after one,"

he was trying to reckon, for pleasant peace of mind's sake, how many
folks were looking at him. Only see--he is turning his white stareful
face in every direction, and his lips are going a thousand and
forty-one, a thousand and forty-two, a thousand and forty-three; he will
not hurry it over, by leaving out the "thousand:" alas! this holiday of
idiotic occupation is all the respite now his soul can know.

And the judge broke that awful silence, saying,

"Prisoner at the bar, you are convicted on your own confession, as well
as upon other evidence, of crimes too horrible to speak of. The
deliberate repetition of that fearful murder, classes you among the
worst of wretches whom it has been my duty to condemn: and when to this
is added your perjured accusation of an innocent man, whom nothing but a
miracle has rescued, your guilt becomes appalling--too hideous for human
contemplation. Miserable man, prepare for death, and after that the
judgment; yet, even for you, if you repent, there may be pardon; it is
my privilege to tell even you, that life and hope are never to be
separated, so long as God is merciful, or man may be contrite. The
Sacrifice of Him who died for us all, for you, poor fellow-creature
[here the good judge wept for a minute like a child]--for you, no less
than for me, is available even to the chief of sinners. It is my duty
and my comfort to direct your blood-stained, but immortal soul, eagerly
to fly to that only refuge from eternal misery. As to this world, your
career of wickedness is at an end: covetousness has conceived and
generated murder; and murder has even over-stept its common bounds, to
repeat the terrible crime, and then to throw its guilt upon the
innocent. Entertain no hope whatever of a respite; mercy in your case
would be sin.

"The sentence of the court is, that you, Simon Jennings, be taken from
that bar to the county jail, and thence on this day fortnight to be
conveyed to the place of execution within the prison, and there by the
hands of the common hangman be hanged by the neck--"

At the word "neck," in the slow and solemn enunciation of the judge,
issued a terrific scream from the mouth of Simon Jennings: was he mad
after all--mad indeed? or was he being strangled by some unseen
executioner? Look at him, convulsively doing battle with an invisible
foe! his eyes start; his face gets bluer and bluer; his hands, fixed
like griffin's talons, clutc