saw that the jurymen had turned towards the judge. Hush!

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They only sought permission to retire.

"He looked wistfully into their faces, one by one, when they passed out, as though to see which way the greater number leaned; but that was fruitless. The jailer touched him on the shoulder. He followed mechanically to the end of the dock, and sat down on a chair. The man pointed it out, or he would not have seen it.

"He looked up into the gallery again. Some of the people were eating, and some fanning themselves with handkerchiefs; for the crowded place was very hot. There was one young man sketehing his face in a little note-book. He wondered whether it was like, and looked on when the artist broke his pencil-point, and made another with his knife, as any idle spectator might have done.

"In the same way, when he turned his eyes towards the judge, his mind began to busy itself with the fashion of his dress, and what it cost, and how he put it on. There was an old, fat gentleman on the bench, too, who had gone out, some half an hour before, and now came back. He wondered within himself whether this man had been to get his dinner, what he had had, and where he had had it; and pursued this train of careless thought until some new object caught his eye and roused another. "Not that all this time his mind was, for an instant,

free from one oppressive, overwhelming sense of the grave that opened at his feet: it was ever present to him, but in a vague and general way, and he could not fix his thoughts upon it. Thus, even while he trembled, and turned burning hot at the idea of speedy death, he fell to counting the iron spikes before him, and wondering how the head of one had been broken off, and whether they would mend it, or leave it as it Then he thought of all the horrors of the gallows and scaffold, and stopped to watch a man sprinkling the floor to cool it, and then went on to think again.

was.

"At length, there was a cry of silence, and a breathless look from all towards the door. The jury returned, and passed him close. He could glean nothing from their faces they might as well have been of stone. Perfect silence ensued-not a rustle-not a breath. Guilty.

“The building rang with a tremendous shout, and another, and another; and then it echoed deep, loud groans, that gathered strength as they swelled out, like angry thunder. It was a peal of joy from the populace outside, greeting the news that he would die on Monday.

"The noise subsided, and he was asked if he had any thing to say why sentence of death should not be passed upon him. He had resumed his listening attitude, and looked intently at his questioner while the demand was made: but it was twice repeated before he seemed to hear it; and then he only muttered that he was an

old man

an old man

an old man; and so, dropping

into a whisper, was silent again.

"The judge assumed the black cap, and the prisoner still stood with the same air and gesture. A woman in the gallery uttered some exclamation, called forth by this dread solemnity. He looked hastily up as if angry at the interruption, and bent forward yet more attentively. The address was solemn and impressive, the sentence fearful to hear. But he stood, like a marble figure, without the motion of a nerve. His haggard ..face was still thrust forward, his under-jaw hanging down, and his eyes staring out before him, when the jailer put his hand upon his arm, and beckoned him away. He gazed stupidly about him for an instant, and obeyed.

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They led him through a paved room under the court, where some prisoners were waiting till their turns came, and others were talking to their friends, who crowded round a grate which looked into the open yard. There was nobody to speak to him: but, as he passed, the prisoners fell back to render him more visible to the people who were clinging to the bars; and they assailed him with opprobrious names, and screeched and hissed. He shook his fist, and would have spat upon them; but his conductors hurried him on through a gloomy passage, lighted by a few dim lamps, into the interior of the prison.

"Here he was searched, that he might not have

about him the means of anticipating the law: this ceremony performed, they led him to one of the condemned cells, and left him there alone.

"He sat down on a stone bench opposite the door, which served for seat and bedstead, and, casting his bloodshot eyes upon the ground, tried to collect his thoughts. After a while, he began to remember a few disjointed fragments of what the judge had said; though it had seemed to him, at the time, that he could not hear a word. These gradually fell into their proper places, and by degrees suggested more: so that, in a little time, he had the whole, almost as it was delivered. To be hanged by the neck till he was dead, that was the end. To be hanged by the neck till he was dead. "As it came on very dark, he began to think of all the men he had known who had died upon the scaffold, some of them through his means. They rose up in such quick succession that he could hardly count them. He had seen some of them die, and had joked, too, because they died with prayers upon their lips. With what a rattling noise the drop went down; and how suddenly they changed from strong and vigorous men to dangling heaps of clothes!

"Some of them might have inhabited that very cell,

sat upon that very spot. It was very dark: why didn't they bring a light? The cell had been built for many years. Scores of men must have passed their last hours there. It was like sitting in a vault strewn with

dead bodies, the cap, the noose, the piníoned arms, the faces that he knew, even beneath that hideous veil. Light! light!

"At length, when his hands were raw with beating against the heavy door and walls, two men appeared, one bearing a candle, which he thrust into an iron candlestick fixed against the wall; the other dragging in a mattress on which to pass the night, for the prisoner was to be left alone no more.

"Then came night, — dark, dismal, silent night. Other watchers are glad to hear the church-clocks strike, for they tell of life and coming day. To the Jew, they brought despair. The boom of every iron bell came laden with the one deep, hollow sound, - Death. Death. What availed the noise and bustle of cheerful morning, which penetrated even there, to him? It was another form of knell, with mockery added to the warning.

"The day passed off, - day! There was no day: it was gone as soon as come, and night came on again, night so long, and yet so short; long in its dreadful silence, and short in its fleeting hours. At one time, he raved and blasphemed; and, at another, howled and tore his hair. Venerable men of his own persuasion had come to pray beside him, but he had driven them away with curses. They renewed their charitable efforts, and he beat them off.

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Saturday night. He had only one night more to live. And, as he thought of this, the day broke, — Sunday.