audience, like a wild animal at bay. "My lord," he cried, or rather
shouted, in an excited voice. The judge motioned impatiently to the
jailor, and strong hands impelled the prisoner from the front of the
dock. Bursting from them, he again sprang forward, and his arms
outstretched, whilst his glittering eye seemed to hold the judge
spell-bound, exclaimed, "My lord, before another month has passed away,
_you_ will appear at the bar of another world, to answer for the life,
the innocent life, which God bestowed upon me, but which you have
impiously cast away as a thing of naught and scorn!" He ceased, and was
at once borne off. The court, in some confusion, hastily departed. It was
thought at the time that the judge's evidently failing health had
suggested the prophecy to the prisoner. It only excited a few days'
wonder, and was forgotten.

The position of a barrister in such circumstances is always painful. I
need hardly say that my own feelings were of a very distressing kind.
Conscious that if the unfortunate man really was guilty, he was at least
not deserving of capital punishment, I exerted myself to procure a
reprieve. In the first place I waited privately on the judge; but he
would listen to no proposal for a respite. Along with a number of
individuals--chiefly of the Society of Friends--I petitioned the crown
for a commutation of the sentence. But being unaccompanied with a
recommendation from the judge, the prayer of our petition was of course
disregarded: the law, it was said, must take its course. How much cruelty
has been exercised under shelter of that remorseless expression!

I would willingly pass over the succeeding events. Unable to save his
life, I endeavored to soothe the few remaining hours of the doomed
convict, and frequently visited him in the condemned cell. The more I saw
of him, the deeper grew my sympathy in his case, which was that of no