The prisoner did not reply:  he was leaning with his elbows on the front of the dock, his bowed face covered with his outspread hands; and the judge passed sentence of death in the accustomed form.  The court then rose, and a turnkey placed his hand upon the prisoner’s arm, to lead him away.  Suddenly he uncovered his face, drew himself up to his full height—­he was a remarkably tall man—­and glared fiercely round upon the 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 vulgar felon.  “I have been a most unfortunate man,” said he one day to me.  “A destiny towards ruin in fortune and in life has pursued me.  I feel as if deserted by God and man; yet I know, or at least would persuade myself, that Heaven will one day vindicate my innocence of this foul charge.  To think of being hanged like a dog for a crime at which my soul revolts!  Great is the crime of those imbecile jurors and that false and hard-hearted judge, who thus, by an irreversible decree, consign a fellow-mortal to a death of violence and disgrace.  Oh God, help me—­help me to sustain that bitter, bitter hour!” And then the poor man would throw himself on his bed and weep.