a wide space was kept clear by the military; the cannon were placed in position; out flashed the swords of the dragoons; beneath and around on every side was the crowd.  Between two brass helmets I could see the scaffold clearly enough, and when in a little while the men, bareheaded and with their attendants, appeared upon it, the surging crowd became stiffened with fear and awe.  And now it was that the incident so simple, so natural, so much in the ordinary course of things, and yet so frightful in its tragic suggestions, took place.  Be it remembered that the season was early May, that the day was fine, that the wheat-fields were clothing themselves in the green of the young crop, and that around the scaffold, standing on a sunny mound, a wide space was kept clear.  When the men appeared beneath the beam, each under his proper halter, there was a dead silence,—­every one was gazing too intently to whisper to his neighbour even.  Just then, out of the grassy space at the foot of the scaffold, in the dead silence audible to all, a lark rose from the side of its nest, and went singing upward in its happy flight.  O heaven! how did that song translate itself into dying ears?  Did it bring, in one wild burning moment, father and mother, and poor Irish cabin, and prayers said at bed-time, and the smell of turf fires, and innocent sweethearting, and rising and setting suns?  Did it—­but the dragoon’s horse has become restive, and his brass helmet bobs up and down and blots everything; and there is a sharp sound, and I feel the great crowd heave and swing, and hear it torn by a sharp shiver of pity, and the men whom I saw so near but a moment ago are at immeasurable distance, and have solved the great enigma,—­and the lark has not yet finished his flight:  you can see and hear him yonder in the fringe of a white May cloud.

This ghastly lark’s flight, when the circumstances are taken in consideration, is, I am inclined to think, more terrible than anything of the same kind which I have encountered in books.  The artistic uses of contrast as background and accompaniment, are well known to nature and the poets.  Joy is continually worked on sorrow, sorrow on joy; riot is framed in peace, peace in riot.  Lear and the Fool always go together.  Trafalgar is being fought while Napoleon is sitting on horseback watching the Austrian army laying down its arms at Ulm.  In Hood’s poem, it is when looking on the released schoolboys at their games that Eugene Aram remembers he is a murderer.  And these two poor Irish labourers could not die without hearing a lark singing in their ears.  It is nature’s fashion.  She never quite goes along with us.  She is sombre at weddings, sunny at funerals, and she frowns on ninety-nine out of a hundred picnics.

There is a stronger element of terror in this incident of the lark than in any story of a similar kind I can remember.