r; but, strong as Ferdinand's own wish was to save him, his
love of justice was still stronger; though the testimony of Don Luis
might be set aside, calm deliberation on all the evidence against
him marked it as sufficiently strong to have sentenced any other so
accused at once. The resolute determination to purge their kingdom
from the black crimes of former years, which both sovereigns felt and
unitedly acted upon, urged them to conquer every private wish and
feeling, rather than depart from the line laid down. The usual
dispensers of justice, the Santa Hermandad--men chosen by their
brother citizens for their lucid judgment, clearness of perception,
and utter absence of all overplus of chivalrous feeling, in matters of
cool dispassionate reasoning--were unanimous in their belief in the
prisoner's guilt, and only acquiesced in the month's reprieve, because
it was Isabella's wish. Against their verdict what could be brought
forward? In reality nothing but the prisoner's own strongly-attested
innocence--an attestation most forcible in the minds of the Sovereign
and the nobles, but of no weight whatever to men accustomed to weigh,
and examine, and cross-examine, and decide on proof, or at least from
analogy, and never from an attestation, which the greatest criminals
might as forcibly make. The power and election of these men Ferdinand
and Isabella had confirmed. How could they, then, interfere in the
present case, and shackle the judgment which they had endowed with
authority, dispute and deny the sentence they had previously given
permission to pronounce? Pardon they might, and restore to life and
liberty; but the very act of pronouncing pardon supposed belief in and
proclamation of guilt. There was but one thing which could save him
and satisfy justice, and that was the sentence of "not guilty." For
this reason Ferdinand refused every petition for Stanley's reprieve,
hoping indeed, spite of all reason, that even at the eleventh hour
evidence of his innocence would and must appear.

Stanley himself had no such hope. All his better and higher nature had
been called forth by the awful and mysterious death of Morales, dealt
too by his own sword--that sword which, in his wild passions, he had
actually prayed might shed his blood. The film of passion had dropped
alike from mental and bodily vision. He beheld his irritated feelings
in their true light, and knew himself in thought a murderer. He would
have sacrificed life its