flash of sunshine flings aside the shades, had descended into that
pit which an hour before had been bellowing, as the foul vapours
exploded like cannons, and brought up the bodies of them who had
perished in the womb of the earth? Was this he who once leapt into the
devouring fire, and reappeared, after all had given over for lost the
glorious boy, with an infant in his arms, while the flames seemed to
eddy back, that they might scathe not the head of the deliverer, and a
shower of blessings fell upon him as he laid it in its mother's bosom,
and made the heart of the widow to sing for joy? It is he. And now the
executioner pulls down the cord from the beam, and fastens it round the
criminal's neck. His face is already covered, and that fatal
handkerchief is in his hand. The whole crowd are now kneeling, and one
multitudinous sob convulses the air;--when wild outcries, and shrieks,
and yells, are at that moment heard from the distant gloom of the glen
that opens up to Moorside, and three figures, one far in advance of the
others, come flying, as on the wings of the wind, towards the gibbet.
Hundreds started to their feet, and "'Tis the maniac--'tis the lunatic!"
was the cry. Precipitating himself down a rocky hill-side, that seemed
hardly accessible but to the goats, the maniac, the lunatic, at a few
desperate leaps and bounds, just as it was expected he would have been
dashed in pieces, alighted unstunned upon the level greensward; and now,
far ahead of his keepers, with incredible swiftness neared the
scaffold--and, the dense crowd making a lane for him in their fear and
astonishment, he flew up the ladder to the horrid platform, and,
grasping his son in his arms, howled dreadfully over him; and then with
a loud voice cried, "Saved--saved--saved!"

So sudden had been that wild rush, that all the officers of justice--the
very executioner--stood aghast; and now the prisoner's neck is free from
that accursed cord--his face is once more visible without that hideous
shroud--and he sinks down senseless on the scaffold. "Seize him--seize
him!" and he was seized--but no maniac, no lunatic, was the father now;
for during the night, and during the dawn, and during the morn, and on
to mid-day--on to the HOUR OF ONE--when all rueful preparations were to
be completed--had Providence been clearing and calming the tumult in
that troubled brain; and as the cottage clock struck ONE, memory
brightened at the chime into a perfect knowle