the sun at noonday. The evidence, in short, is irresistible; and if the
just and necessary provisions of the law are not enforced in such very
plain cases, then society will be dissolved, and security for property
there will be none. Gentlemen, retire and make up your verdict."

The jury were not disposed to retire. After communing a few minutes
together, one of them stood up and delivered the verdict: it was
_Guilty!_ The judge assumed the crowning badge of the judicial
potentate--the black cap; and the clerk of arraigns asked the prisoner at
the bar, in the usual form, if he had anything to urge why sentence of
death should not be passed upon him.

Poor Harvey! I durst scarcely look at him. As the sonorous words fell on
his ear, he was grasping nervously with shaking hands at the front of the
dock. He appeared stunned, bewildered, as a man but half-awakened from a
hideous dream might be supposed to look. He had comprehended, though he
had scarcely heard, the verdict; for on the instant, the voice which but
a few years before sang to him by the brook side, was ringing through his
brain, and he could recognize the little pattering feet of his children,
as, sobbing and clinging to their shrieking mother's dress, she and they
were hurried out of court The clerk, after a painful pause, repeated the
solemn formula. By a strong effort the doomed man mastered his agitation;
his pale countenance lighted up with indignant fire, and firm and
self-possessed, he thus replied to the fearful interrogatory:--

"Much could I say in the name, not of mercy, but of justice, why the
sentence about to be passed on me should not be pronounced; but nothing,
alas! that will avail me with you, pride-blinded ministers of death. You
fashion to yourselves--out of your own vain conceits do you
fashion--modes and instruments, by the aid of which you fondly imagine to