“Well,” continued the judge, when silence was again restored, “your unparalleled obduracy has gained one point; it was my intention to have ordered you for execution tomorrow at the hour of twelve o’clock; but, as a Christian man, I could not think for a moment of hurrying you into eternity in your present state.  The sentence of the court then is that you be taken from the dock in which you now stand to the prison from whence you came, and that from thence you be brought to the place of execution on next Saturday, and there be hanged by the neck until you be dead, and may God have mercy on your soul!”

The Rapparee gazed at him with a look of the most hardened effrontery, and exclaimed, “Is it in earnest you are?” after which he was once mor|e committed to his cell, loaded with heavy chains, which he wore, by the I way, during his trial.

Now, in order to account for his outrageous conduct, we must make a disclosure to the reader.  There is in and about all jails a certain officer yclept a hangman—­an officer who is permitted a freer ingress and egress than almost any other person connected with those gloomy establishments.  This hangman, who resided in the prison, had a brother whom Sir Robert Whitecraft had hanged, and, it was thought, innocently.  Be this as it may, the man in question was heard to utter strong threats of vengeance against Sir Robert for having his brother, whose innocence he asserted, brought to execution.  In some time after this a pistol was fired one night at Sir Robert from behind a hedge, which missed him; but as his myrmidons were with him, and the night was light, a pursuit took place, and the guilty wretch was taken prisoner, with the pistol on his person, still warm after having been discharged.  The consequence was that he was condemned to death.  But it so happened that at this period, although there were five or six executions to take place, yet there was no hangman to be had, that officer having died suddenly, after a fit of liquor, and the sheriff would have been obliged to discharge the office with his own hands unless a finisher of the law could be found.  In brief, he was found, and in the person of the individual alluded to, who, in consequence of his consenting to accept the office, got a pardon from the Crown.  Now this man and the Rapparee had been old acquaintances, and renewed their friendship in prison.  Through the means of the hangman O’Donnel got in as much whiskey as he pleased, and we need scarcely say that they often got intoxicated together.  The secret, therefore, which we had to disclose to the reader, in explanation of the Rapparee’s conduct at his trial, was simply this, that the man was three-quarters drunk.

After trial he was placed in a darker dungeon than before; but such was the influence of the worthy executioner with every officer of the jail, that he was permitted to go either in or out without search, and as he often gave a “slug,” as he called it, to the turnkeys, they consequently allowed him, in this respect, whatever privileges he wished.  Even the Rapparee’s dungeon was not impenetrable to him, especially as he put the matter on a religious footing, to wit, that as the unfortunate robber was not allowed the spiritual aid of his own clergy, he himself was the only person left to prepare him for death, which he did with the whiskey-bottle.