CHAPTER XLVIII.

SENTENCE AND DEATH.

SILENCE, silence! shouted the indignant crier, and the episodical cause of Burke, v. Sharp, was speedily hushed.

The eyes of all now concentred on the miserable criminal; for the time, every thing else seemed forgotten.  Roger, Grace, and Ben, grouped together in the midst of many friends, who had crowded round them to congratulate, leaned forward like the rest of that dense hall, as simply thralled spectators.  Mr. Grantly lifted up a pair of very moistened eyes behind his spectacles, and looked earnestly on, with his wig, from agitation, wriggled tails in front.  The judge (it was good old Baron Parker) put on the black cap to pronounce sentence.  There was a pause.

But we have forgotten Simon Jennings—­what was he about? did that “cynosure of neighbouring eyes” appear alarmed at his position, anxious at his fate, or even attentive to what was going on?  No:  he not only appeared, but was, the most unconcerned individual in the whole court:  he even tried to elude utter vacancy of thought by amusing himself with external things about him:  and, on Wordsworth’s principle of inducing sleep by counting

  “A flock of sheep, that leisurely pass by,
  One after one,”

he was trying to reckon, for pleasant peace of mind’s sake, how many folks were looking at him.  Only see—­he is turning his white stareful face in every direction, and his lips are going a thousand and forty-one, a thousand and forty-two, a thousand and forty-three; he will not hurry it over, by leaving out the “thousand:”  alas! this holiday of idiotic occupation is all the respite now his soul can know.

And the judge broke that awful silence, saying,

“Prisoner at the bar, you are convicted on your own confession, as well as upon other evidence, of crimes too horrible to speak of.  The deliberate repetition of that fearful murder, classes you among the worst of wretches whom it has been my duty to condemn:  and when to this is added your perjured accusation of an innocent man, whom nothing but a miracle has rescued, your guilt becomes appalling—­too hideous for human contemplation.  Miserable man, prepare for death, and after that the judgment; yet, even for you, if you repent, there may be pardon; it is my privilege to tell even you, that life and hope are never to be separated, so long as God is merciful, or man may be contrite.  The Sacrifice of Him who died for us all, for you, poor fellow-creature [here the good judge wept for a minute like a child]—­for you, no less than for me, is available even to the chief of sinners.  It is my duty and my comfort to direct your blood-stained, but immortal soul, eagerly to fly to that only refuge from eternal misery.  As to this world, your career of wickedness is at an end:  covetousness has conceived and generated murder; and murder has even over-stept its common bounds, to repeat the terrible crime, and then to throw its guilt upon the innocent.  Entertain no hope whatever of a respite; mercy in your case would be sin.