e and frightened face, handed down the
paper.

And the simple message sounded through the court--

'Guilty!'

And Mr. Dangerfield bowed, and lifted up a white, smiling countenance,
all over shining now with a slight moisture.

Then there was some whispering among the conductors of the prosecution;
and the leader stood up to say, that, in consequence of a communication
from the law officers in England, where the prisoner was to be arraigned
on a capital indictment, involving serious consequences to others--for
the murder, he meant, of Mr. Beauclerc--the crown wished that he should
stand over for judgment until certain steps in that case had been taken
at the other side. Then the court enquired whether they had considered
so and so; and the leader explained and satisfied his lordship, who made
an order accordingly. And Mr. Dangerfield made a low bow, with a smirk,
to his lordship, and a nod, with the same, to his counsel; and he
turned, and the turnkey and darkness received him.

Mr. Dangerfield, or shall we say the villain, Charles Archer, with
characteristic promptitude and coolness, availed himself of the interval
to try every influence he could once have set in motion, and as it were
to gather his strength for a mighty tussle with the king of terrors,
when his pale fingers should tap at his cell door. I have seen two of
his letters, written with consummate plausibility and adroitness, and
which have given me altogether a very high idea of his powers. But they
were all received with a terrifying coldness or with absolute silence.
There was no reasoning against an intuition. Every human being felt that
the verdict was true, and that the judgment, when it came would be
right: and recoiled from the smiling gentleman, over whose white head
the hempen circle hung like a diabolical glory Dangerfield, who had
something of the Napoleonic faculty of never 'making pictures' to
himself, saw this fact in its literality, and acquiesced in it.

He was a great favourite with the gaoler, whom, so long as he had the
command of his money, he had treated with a frank and convivial
magnificence, and who often sat up to one o'clock with him, and enjoyed
his stories prodigiously, for the sarcastic man of the world lost none
of his amusing qualities: and--the fatigues of his barren correspondence
ended--slept, and eat, and drank, pretty much as usual.

This Giant Despair, who carried the keys at his girdle, did not often
get so swell