Hetty made an involuntary movement towards him, some of the love that she had once lived in the midst of was come near her again.  She kept hold of Dinah’s hand, but she went up to Adam and said timidly, “Will you kiss me again, Adam, for all I’ve been so wicked?”

Adam took the blanched wasted hand she put out to him, and they gave each other the solemn unspeakable kiss of a lifelong parting.

“And tell him,” Hetty said, in rather a stronger voice, “tell him...for there’s nobody else to tell him...as I went after him and couldn’t find him...and I hated him and cursed him once...but Dinah says I should forgive him...and I try...for else God won’t forgive me.”

There was a noise at the door of the cell now—­the key was being turned in the lock, and when the door opened, Adam saw indistinctly that there were several faces there.  He was too agitated to see more—­even to see that Mr. Irwine’s face was one of them.  He felt that the last preparations were beginning, and he could stay no longer.  Room was silently made for him to depart, and he went to his chamber in loneliness, leaving Bartle Massey to watch and see the end.

Chapter XLVII

The Last Moment

It was a sight that some people remembered better even than their own sorrows—­the sight in that grey clear morning, when the fatal cart with the two young women in it was descried by the waiting watching multitude, cleaving its way towards the hideous symbol of a deliberately inflicted sudden death.

All Stoniton had heard of Dinah Morris, the young Methodist woman who had brought the obstinate criminal to confess, and there was as much eagerness to see her as to see the wretched Hetty.

But Dinah was hardly conscious of the multitude.  When Hetty had caught sight of the vast crowd in the distance, she had clutched Dinah convulsively.

“Close your eyes, Hetty,” Dinah said, “and let us pray without ceasing to God.”

And in a low voice, as the cart went slowly along through the midst of the gazing crowd, she poured forth her soul with the wrestling intensity of a last pleading, for the trembling creature that clung to her and clutched her as the only visible sign of love and pity.

Dinah did not know that the crowd was silent, gazing at her with a sort of awe—­she did not even know how near they were to the fatal spot, when the cart stopped, and she shrank appalled at a loud shout hideous to her ear, like a vast yell of demons.  Hetty’s shriek mingled with the sound, and they clasped each other in mutual horror.

But it was not a shout of execration—­not a yell of exultant cruelty.

It was a shout of sudden excitement at the appearance of a horseman cleaving the crowd at full gallop.  The horse is hot and distressed, but answers to the desperate spurring; the rider looks as if his eyes were glazed by madness, and he saw nothing but what was unseen by others.  See, he has something in his hand—­he is holding it up as if it were a signal.