ce by a jury of your countrymen after a patient
trial. With that finding I need scarcely say I entirely agree. I am as
satisfied of your guilt as if I had seen you commit the act with my own
bodily eyes. The circumstance of your being a person who, from habits and
education, should have been above committing so base a crime, only
aggravates your guilt. However, no matter who or what you have been, you
must expiate your offence on the scaffold. The law has very properly, for
the safety of society, decreed the punishment of death for such crimes:
our only and plain duty is to execute that law."

The prisoner did not reply: he was leaning with his elbows on the front
of the dock, his bowed face covered with his outspread hands; and the
judge passed sentence of death in the accustomed form. The court then
rose, and a turnkey placed his hand upon the prisoner's arm, to lead him
away. Suddenly he uncovered his face, drew himself up to his full
height--he was a remarkably tall man--and glared fiercely round upon the
audience, like a wild animal at bay. "My lord," he cried, or rather
shouted, in an excited voice. The judge motioned impatiently to the
jailor, and strong hands impelled the prisoner from the front of the
dock. Bursting from them, he again sprang forward, and his arms
outstretched, whilst his glittering eye seemed to hold the judge
spell-bound, exclaimed, "My lord, before another month has passed away,
_you_ will appear at the bar of another world, to answer for the life,
the innocent life, which God bestowed upon me, but which you have
impiously cast away as a thing of naught and scorn!" He ceased, and was
at once borne off. The court, in some confusion, hastily departed. It was
thought at the time that the judge's evidently failing health had
suggested the prophecy to the prisoner. It only excited a few days'
wonder, and was forgotten.

The position of a barrister in such circumstances is always painful. I
need hardly say that my own feelings were of a very distressing kind.
Conscious that if the unfortunate man really was guilty, he was at least
not deserving of capital punishment, I exerted myself to procure a
reprieve. In the first place I waited privately on the judge; but he
would listen to no proposal for a respite. Along with a number of
individuals--chiefly of the Society of Friends--I petitioned the crown
for a commutation of the sentence. But being unaccompanied with a
recommendation from the judge, th