then rested full, and with a stern significance, on the face of his
judge.

"My lord," he began, "I have but one reason to advance against the
sentence of the law. If you have interest to prevent or mitigate it,
that reason will, I think, suffice to enlist you on my behalf. I said
that the first cause of those offences against the law which brings me to
this bar was the committing me to prison on a charge of which I was
wholly innocent! My lord judge, you were the man who accused me of that
charge, and subjected me to that imprisonment! Look at me well, my lord,
and you may trace in the countenance of the hardened felon you are about
to adjudge to death the features of a boy whom, some seven years ago, you
accused before a London magistrate of the theft of your watch. On the
oath of a man who has one step on the threshold of death, the accusation
was unjust. And, fit minister of the laws you represent! you, who will
now pass my doom,--You were the cause of my crimes! My lord, I have
done. I am ready to add another to the long and dark list of victims who
are first polluted and then sacrificed by the blindness and the injustice
of human codes!"

While Clifford spoke, every eye turned from him to the judge, and every
one was appalled by the ghastly and fearful change which had fallen over
Brandon's face. Men said, afterwards, that they saw written there, in
terrible distinctness, the characters of death; and there certainly
seemed something awful and preternatural in the bloodless and haggard
calmness of his proud features. Yet his eye did not quail, nor the
muscles of his lip quiver; and with even more than his wonted loftiness,
he met the regard of the prisoner. But, as alone conspicuous throughout
the motionless and breathless crowd the judge and criminal gazed upon
each other, and as the eyes of the spectators wandered on each, a