of the surrounding agitation.

The voice of the multitude which surrounds the court-house, sounds
like the murmur of the sea, till suddenly it is raised to a sort
of shout. John West, the terror of the surrounding country, the
sheep-stealer and burglar, had been found guilty.

"What is the sentence?" is asked by a hundred voices.

The answer is "Transportation for Life."

But there was one standing aloof on the hill, whose inquiring eye
wandered over the crowd with indescribable anguish, whose pallid cheek
grew more and more ghastly at every denunciation of the culprit, and
who, when at last the sentence was pronounced, fell insensible upon
the green-sward. It was the burglar's son.

When the boy recovered from his swoon, it was late in the afternoon;
he was alone; the faint tinkling of the sheep-bell had again replaced
the sound of the human chorus of expectation, and dread, and jesting;
all was peaceful, he could not understand why he lay there, feeling
so weak and sick. He raised himself tremulously and looked around, the
turf was cut and spoilt by the trampling of many feet. All his life
of the last few months floated before his memory, his residence in
his father's hovel with ruffianly comrades, the desperate schemes he
heard as he pretended to sleep on his lowly bed, their expeditions at
night, masked and armed, their hasty returns, the news of his father's
capture, his own removal to the house of some female in the town, the
court, the trial, the condemnation.