o knew Lord Jeffreys regarded this as the lull before the storm, and
braced themselves for the explosion. But none came.

Slowly, faintly, the colour crept back into that ashen face. The scarlet
figure lost its rigidity, and bent forward. His lordship began to speak.
In a muted voice and briefly--much more briefly than his wont on such
occasions and in a manner entirely mechanical, the manner of a man
whose thoughts are elsewhere while his lips are speaking--he delivered
sentence of death in the prescribed form, and without the least
allusion to what Peter Blood had said. Having delivered it, he sank back
exhausted, his eyes half-closed, his brow agleam with sweat.

The prisoners filed out.

Mr. Pollexfen--a Whig at heart despite the position of Judge-Advocate
which he occupied--was overheard by one of the jurors to mutter in the
ear of a brother counsel:

"On my soul, that swarthy rascal has given his lordship a scare. It's a
pity he must hang. For a man who can frighten Jeffreys should go far."

CHAPTER IV. HUMAN MERCHANDISE

Mr. Pollexfen was at one and the same time right and wrong--a condition
much more common than is generally supposed.

He was right in his indifferently expressed thought that a man whose
mien and words could daunt such a lord of terror as Jeffreys, should by
the dominance of his nature be able to fashion himself a considerable
destiny. He was wrong--though justifiably so--in his assumption that
Peter Blood must hang.

I have said that the tribulations with which he was visited as a result
of his errand of mercy to Oglethorpe's Farm contained--although as yet
he did not perceive it, perhaps--two sources of thankfulness: one that
he was tried at all; the other that his trial took place on the 19th
of September. Until the 18th, the sentences passed by the court of the
Lords Commissioners had been carried out literally and expeditiously.
But on the morning of the 19th there arrived at Taunton a courier from
Lord Sunderland, the Secretary of State, with a letter for Lord Jeffreys
wherein he was informed that His Majesty had been graciously pleased
to command that eleven hundred rebels should be furnished for
transportation to some of His Majesty's southern plantations, Jamaica,
Barbados, or any of the Leeward Islands.

You are not to suppose that this command was dictated by any sense of
mercy. Lord Churchill was no more than just when he spoke of the King's
heart as being as insensibl