impetuous. The court was deeply impressed by the prisoner's defence. But
the judge's summing-up was all against the accused, and the verdict was
"Guilty!" Madeline lived but a few hours after hearing it.

The following evening Walter obtained admittance to the condemned cell.

"Eugene Aram," he said, in tones of agony, "if at this moment you can
lay your hand on your heart, and say, 'Before God, and at peril of my
soul, I am innocent of this deed,' I will depart; I will believe you,
and bear as I may the reflection that I have been one of the unconscious
agents in condemning to a fearful death an innocent man. But if you
cannot at so dark a crisis take that oath, then, oh then, be generous,
even in guilt, and let me not be haunted through life by the spectre of
a ghastly and restless doubt!"

On the eve of the day destined to be his last on earth Eugene Aram
placed in Walter's hands a paper which that young man pledged himself
not to read till Rowland Lester's grey hairs had gone to the grave. This
document set forth at length the story of Aram's early life, how he
sought knowledge amidst grinding poverty, and how, when a gigantic
discovery in science gleamed across his mind, a discovery which only
lack of means prevented him from realising to the vast benefit of truth
and man, the tempter came to him. This tempter took the form of a
distant relative, Richard Houseman, with his doctrine that "Laws order
me to starve, but self-preservation is an instinct more sacred than
society," and his demand for co-operation in an act of robbery from one
Daniel Clarke, whose crimes were many, who was, moreover, on the point
of disappearing with a number of jewels he had borrowed on false
pretences.