owly boomed forth twelve strokes it was
known in the Bail Court, where a dozen rapid hands were writing out
words the echo of which had scarcely died away in the inner court,
that the Judges had finished their task, and that the Jury had
retired to consider their verdict. It was known also in the lobbies,
where a throng of gowned and wigged barristers were assembled,
hanging on as the fringe of the densely packed audience that sat
behind the Claimant, and overflowed by the opened doorway. Thence
it reached the crowd outside, and after the first movement and hum
of conversation had subsided, a dead silence fell upon Westminster
Hall, and all eyes were fixed upon the door by which, at any moment,
messengers might issue with the word or words up to the utterance of
which by the Foreman of the Jury the great trial slowly dragged its
length.

Half an hour later the door burst open, and messengers came leaping
in breathless haste down the steps and across the Hall, shouting as
they ran,--

"Guilty! Guilty on all counts!" The words were taken up by the
crowd, and passed from mouth to mouth in voices scarcely above a
whisper. It was a flock of junior barristers, issuing from the
court, radiant and laughing, who brought the next news.

"Fourteen years! Fourteen years!" they called out.

This time the crowd in Westminster Hall took up the cry in louder
tones, and there was some attempt at cheering, but it did not
prevail. The less dense crowd in the Yard received the intelligence
without any demonstration and after a brief pause made off with one
consent for the judges' entrance in St. Margaret's Street, where,
peradventure, they might see the prisoner taken away, or at least
would catch a glimpse of the judges and counsel.

From this hour up to nearly four o'clock the crowd, in numbers far
exceeding those present at the first intimation of the verdict and
sentence, hung about St. Margaret's Street and Palace Yard waiting
for the coming forth of the prisoner, who had long ago been safely
lodged in Newgate. They did not know that as soon as the convict
was given in charge of the tipstaff of the court he was led away by
Inspector Denning, along a carefully planned and circuitous route
that entirely baffled the curiosity of the waiting crowd. Through the
Court of Exchequer the prisoner and his guards went, by the members'
private staircase, across the lobby, along the corridor, through the
smoking-room into the Commons Courty