nnecting operations rather different in their character, which must
have been going on at the same moment. "In my mind's eye," I saw the
attendants carrying the fowl and eggs to the breakfast table, while the
sheriffs and their guests were conducting the sufferers to the scaffold.

From what I have already said, it must be inferred that the first
speeches which accomplished the circuit of the table, were of a very
serious character. But, mingled with them, some common breakfast-table
requests and civilities caught my attention, as singular from their
association. The performance of duties the most important cannot relieve
man from the necessity of claiming his "daily bread," and I do not know
that it is any reproach to a clergyman that he is not distinguished by
versatility of manner. The abrupt transition from the gravity of the
pulpit to the flippancy of the bar I should not admire; but the
consistency of the reverend gentleman here attracted my notice.
I had been just listening to him while he repeated, with devotional
elongation, the solemn words of the burial service; and when I heard him
with the same elongation of sound, address himself to me--"Shall I
trouble you to cut up the fowl--can I help you to some tongue, sir?"
I confess that I felt tempted not to laugh, but to comment on the
oddly-contrasted feelings which the same voice, thus variously exerted,
inspired.

Horror-struck, as I had been, at the first mention of the unfeeling word
"breakfast," my excuse for staying was to see if others could eat. That
_I_ should take food was quite out of the question. But the wing of a
fowl having been put on my plate, I thought it would be rudeness to
reject it. I began to eat, inwardly reflecting that my abstinence would
nothing benefit those whose sufferings I had still in my memory; and
improving on this reconciling thought, I presently detected myself
holding my plate for a second supply. "O sentiment!" I mentally
exclaimed, "what art thou when opposed to a breakfast?"

By the time we had disposed of our first cup of tea, we had got through
the pious reflections which each of us had to offer on the particular
occasion which had brought us together, and conversation started in a
livelier vein. The gentleman who had assisted the ordinary, by praying
with the culprits, gaily remarked to him, with a benevolent chuckle on
his face, that _they_ (meaning himself and the reverend gentleman) had
succeeded in refuting the Un