 for the prisoner. Her forehead had been strikingly
expressive of an engrossing terror and compassion that saw nothing but the peril
of the accused. This had been so very noticeable, so very powerfully and
naturally shown, that starers who had had no pity for him were touched by her;
and the whisper went about, »Who are they?«
    Jerry, the messenger, who had made his own observations, in his own manner,
and who had been sucking the rust off his fingers in his absorption, stretched
his neck to hear who they were. The crowd about him had pressed and passed the
inquiry on to the nearest attendant, and from him it had been more slowly
pressed and passed back; at last it got to Jerry:
    »Witnesses.«
    »For which side?«
    »Against.«
    »Against what side?«
    »The prisoner's.«
    The Judge, whose eyes had gone in the general direction, recalled them,
leaned back in his seat, and looked steadily at the man whose life was in his
hand, as Mr. Attorney-General rose to spin the rope, grind the axe, and hammer
the nails into the scaffold.
 

                                  Chapter III

                                A Disappointment

Mr. Attorney-General had to inform the jury, that the prisoner before them,
though young in years, was old in the treasonable practices which claimed the
forfeit of his life. That this correspondence with the public enemy was not a
correspondence of to-day, or of yesterday, or even of last year, or of the year
before. That, it was certain the prisoner had, for longer than that, been in the
habit of passing and repassing between France and England, on secret business of
which he could give no honest account. That, if it were in the nature of
traitorous ways to thrive (which happily it never was), the real wickedness and
guilt of his business might have remained undiscovered. That Providence,
however, had put it into the heart of a person who was beyond fear and beyond
reproach, to ferret out the nature of the prisoner's schemes, and, struck with
horror, to disclose them to his Majesty's Chief Secretary of State and most
honourable Privy Council. That, this patriot would be produced before them.
That, his position and attitude were, on the whole, sublime. That, he had been
the prisoner's friend, but, at once in an auspicious and an evil hour detecting
his infamy, had resolved to immolate the traitor he could no longer cherish in
his bosom, on the sacred altar of
