“This dreadful day is at length over,” he said as he flung himself on his pallet of straw in the condemned cell, on the evening of that memorable day.  “Thank God it is over, and I know the worst, and nothing now remains to hope or fear.  A few brief hours and this weary world will be a dream of the past, and I shall awake from my bed of dust to a new and better existence, beyond the power of temptation—­beyond the might of sin.  My God, I thank Thee.  Thou hast dealt justly with Thy servant.  The soul that sinneth, it must die; and grievously have I sinned in seeking to mar Thy glorious image—­to cast the life thou gavest me as a worthless boon at Thy feet.  I bow my head in the dust and am silent before Thee.  Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”

His meditations were interrupted by the entrance of the chaplain of the jail—­a venerable Christian who felt a deep interest in the prisoner, and who now sought him to try and awaken him to a full sense of his awful situation.

“My son,” he said, laying his hand upon Anthony’s shoulder, “how is it with you this night?  What is God saying to your soul?”

“All is well,” replied Anthony.  “He is speaking to me words of peace and comfort.”

“Your fellow-men have condemned you—­” he paused then added with a deep sigh, “—­and I too, Anthony Hurdlestone, believe you guilty.”

“God has not condemned me, good father, and by the light of His glorious countenance that now shines upon me, shedding joy and peace into my heart, I am innocent.”

“Oh, that I could think you so!”

“Though it has seemed right in the eyes of the All-wise Sovereign of the universe that I should be pronounced guilty before an earthly bar, I feel assured that He, in His own good time, will declare my innocence.”

“Will that profit you aught, my son, when you are dust?”

“It will rescue my name from infamy, and give me a mournful interest in the memory of my friends.”

“Poor lad, this is but a melancholy consolation; I wish I could believe you.”

“What a monster of depravity you must think me, if you can imagine me guilty after what I have just said!  Is truth so like falsehood, that a man of your holy calling cannot discern the difference?  Do I look like a guilty man?  Do I speak like a guilty man who knows that he has but a few days to live?  If I were the wretch you take me for, should I not be overwhelmed with grief and despair?  Would not the thought of death be insupportable?  Oh! believe one who seeks not to live—­who is contented to die, when I again solemnly declare my innocence.”

“I have seen men, Anthony Hurdlestone, who, up to the very hour of their execution, persisted in the same thing and yet, after all their solemn protestations, owned at the last moment that their sentence was just, and that they merited death.”

“And I too have merited death,” said Anthony mournfully.  “God is just.”