ir minds that it was
to be punished as severely as gang-robbery or assassination. A just
judge would, beyond all doubt, have reserved the case for the
consideration of the sovereign. But Impey would not hear of mercy or
delay.

The excitement among all classes was great. Francis and Francis's few
English adherents described the Governor-General and the Chief Justice
as the worst of murderers. Clavering, it was said, swore that, even at
the foot of the gallows, Nuncomar should be rescued. The bulk of the
European society, though strongly attached to the Governor-General,
could not but feel compassion for a man who, with all his crimes, had so
long filled so large a space in their sight, who had been great and
powerful before the British empire in India began to exist, and to whom,
in the old times, governors and members of council, then mere commercial
factors, had paid court for protection. The feeling of the Hindoos was
infinitely stronger. They were, indeed, not a people to strike one blow
for their countryman. But his sentence filled them with sorrow and
dismay. Tried even by their low standard of morality, he was a bad man.
But, bad as he was, he was the head of their race and religion, a
Brahmin of the Brahmins. He had inherited the purest and highest caste.
He had practised with the greatest punctuality all those ceremonies to
which the superstitious Bengalese ascribe far more importance than to
the correct discharge of the social duties. They felt, therefore, as a
devout Catholic in the dark ages would have felt at seeing a prelate of
the highest dignity sent to the gallows by a secular tribunal.
According to their old national laws, a Brahmin could not be put to
death for any crime whatever. And the crime for which Nuncomar was about
to die was regarded by them in much the same light in which the selling
of an unsound horse for a sound price is regarded by a Yorkshire jockey.

The Mussulmans alone appear to have seen with exultation the fate of the
powerful Hindoo, who had attempted to rise by means of the ruin of
Mahommed Reza Khan. The Mahommedan historian of those times takes
delight in aggravating the charge. He assures us that in Nuncomar's
house a casket was found containing counterfeits of the seals of all the
richest men of the province. We have never fallen in with any other
authority for this story, which in itself is by no means improbable.

The day drew near; and Nuncomar prepared himself to die wi