uelty, though it scruples not to hound the
patriot with spies, to pack the corrupt jury, to bribe the hangman, and
to erect the infamous gallows, would hesitate to inflict so horrible a
doom: not, I am well aware, from virtue, not from philanthropy, but with
the fear before it of the withering scorn of the good.

But I wander from M'Guire. From this dread glance into the past and
future, his thoughts returned at a bound upon the present. How had he
wandered there? and how long--O heavens! how long had he been about it?
He pulled out his watch; and found that but three minutes had elapsed.
It seemed too bright a thing to be believed. He glanced at the church
clock; and sure enough, it marked an hour four minutes in advance of the
watch.

Of all that he endured, M'Guire declares that pang was the most
desolate. Till then, he had had one friend, one counsellor, in whom he
plenarily trusted; by whose advertisement he numbered the minutes that
remained to him of life; on whose sure testimony he could tell when the
time was come to risk the last adventure, to cast the bag away from him,
and take to flight. And now in what was he to place reliance? His watch
was slow; it might be losing time; if so, in what degree? What limit
could he set to its derangement? and how much was it possible for a
watch to lose in thirty minutes? Five? ten? fifteen? It might be so;
already, it seemed years since he had left St. James's Hall on this so
promising enterprise; at any moment, then, the blow was to be looked
for.

In the face of this new distress, the wild disorder of his pulses
settled down; and a broken weariness succeeded, as though he had lived
for centuries and for centuries been dead. The buildings and the people
in the street became incredibly small, and far-away, and bright; London
sounded in his ears stilly, like a whisper; and the rattle of the cab
that nearly charged him down was like a sound from Africa. Meanwhile, he
was conscious of a strange abstraction from himself; and heard and felt
his footfalls on the ground, as those of a very old, small, debile, and
tragically fortuned man, whom he sincerely pitied.

As he was thus moving forward past the National Gallery, in a medium, it
seemed, of greater rarity and quiet than ordinary air, there slipped
into his mind the recollection of a certain entry in Whitcomb Street
hard by, where he might perhaps lay down his tragic cargo unremarked.
Thither, then, he bent his steps, se