n seen to start at the discharge, as
if the report had frightened him. But he neither stopped nor slackened
his pace in the least, and ran on full forty yards further. Then,
without one reel or stagger, or sign of faintness, or quivering of any
limb, he dropped.

Some of them hurried up to where he lay;--the hangman with them.
Everything had passed so quickly, that the smoke had not yet scattered,
but curled slowly off in a little cloud, which seemed like the dead
man's spirit moving solemnly away. There were a few drops of blood upon
the grass--more, when they turned him over--that was all.

'Look here! Look here!' said the hangman, stooping one knee beside the
body, and gazing up with a disconsolate face at the officer and men.
'Here's a pretty sight!'

'Stand out of the way,' replied the officer. 'Serjeant! see what he had
about him.'

The man turned his pockets out upon the grass, and counted, besides some
foreign coins and two rings, five-and-forty guineas in gold. These were
bundled up in a handkerchief and carried away; the body remained there
for the present, but six men and the serjeant were left to take it to
the nearest public-house.

'Now then, if you're going,' said the serjeant, clapping Dennis on the
back, and pointing after the officer who was walking towards the shed.

To which Mr Dennis only replied, 'Don't talk to me!' and then repeated
what he had said before, namely, 'Here's a pretty sight!'

'It's not one that you care for much, I should think,' observed the
serjeant coolly.

'Why, who,' said Mr Dennis rising, 'should care for it, if I don't?'

'Oh! I didn't know you was so tender-hearted,' said the serjeant.
'That's all!'

'Tender-hearted!' echoed Dennis. 'Tender-hearted! Look at this man. Do
you call THIS constitootional? Do you see him shot through and through
instead of being worked off like a Briton? Damme, if I know which
party to side with. You're as bad as the other. What's to become of the
country if the military power's to go a superseding the ciwilians in
this way? Where's this poor feller-creetur's rights as a citizen, that
he didn't have ME in his last moments! I was here. I was willing. I
was ready. These are nice times, brother, to have the dead crying out
against us in this way, and sleep comfortably in our beds arterwards;
wery nice!'

Whether he derived any material consolation from binding the prisoners,
is uncertain; most probably he did. At all events his being su