lt the light of both upon his spirit.

"Surely," said he, "as I am to die, is it not better that I should die
innocent than guilty? Instead of fretting that I suffer, a guiltless
man, surely I ought to thank God that I am so; an' that my soul hasn't
to meet the sin of such a revengeful act as I'm now condemned for. I'll
die, then, like a Christian man, putting my hope and trust in the mercy
of my Redeemer--ever an' always hoping that by His assistance I will be
enabled to do it."

Different, indeed, were the moral state and position of these two young
men; the one, though lying in his prison cell, was sustained by the
force of conscious innocence, and that reliance upon the mercy of God,
which constitutes the highest order of piety, and the noblest basis of
fortitude; the other, on the contrary, disturbed by the tumultuous and
gloomy associations of guilt, and writhing under the conviction, that,
although he had revenge, he had not satisfaction. The terror of crime
was upon him, and he felt himself deprived of that best and only
security, which sets all vain apprehensions at defiance, the
consciousness of inward integrity. Who, after all, would barter an
honest heart for the danger arising from secret villany, when such an
apparently triumphant villain as Bartle Flanagan felt a deadly fear, of
Connor O'Donovan in his very dungeon? Such, however, is guilt, and such
are the terrors that accompany it.

The circumstances which, in Ireland, usually follow the conviction of
a criminal, are so similar to each other, that we feel it, even in this
case, unnecessary to do more than give a mere sketch of Connor's brief
life as a culprit. We have just observed that the only clause in the
judge's charge which smote the heart of the traitor, Flanagan, with a
presentiment of evil, was that containing the words in which something
like a, hope of having his sentence mitigated was held out to him, in
consequence of the recommendation to mercy by which the jury accompanied
their verdict. It is very strange, on the other hand, that, at the
present stage of our story, neither his father nor mother knew anything
whatsoever of the judge having given expression to such a hope. The
old man, distracted as he was at the time, heard nothing, or at least
remembered nothing, but the awful appearance of the black cap, or, as
they term it in the country, the barradh dhu, and the paralyzing
words in which the sentence of death was pronounced upon his