ner, when the clock struck twelve.

It was a solemn sound, and not merely for its reference to to-morrow;
for he knew that in that chime the murderer's knell was rung. He had
seen him pass along the crowded street, amidst the execration of the
throng; and marked his quivering lip, and trembling limbs; the ashy hue
upon his face, his clammy brow, the wild distraction of his eye--the
fear of death that swallowed up all other thoughts, and gnawed without
cessation at his heart and brain. He had marked the wandering look,
seeking for hope, and finding, turn where it would, despair. He had seen
the remorseful, pitiful, desolate creature, riding, with his coffin
by his side, to the gibbet. He knew that, to the last, he had been an
unyielding, obdurate man; that in the savage terror of his condition he
had hardened, rather than relented, to his wife and child; and that the
last words which had passed his white lips were curses on them as his
enemies.

Mr Haredale had determined to be there, and see it done. Nothing but
the evidence of his own senses could satisfy that gloomy thirst for
retribution which had been gathering upon him for so many years. The
locksmith knew this, and when the chimes had ceased to vibrate, hurried
away to meet him.

'For these two men,' he said, as he went, 'I can do no more. Heaven have
mercy on them!--Alas! I say I can do no more for them, but whom can I
help? Mary Rudge will have a home, and a firm friend when she most wants
one; but Barnaby--poor Barnaby--willing Barnaby--what aid can I render
him? There are many, many men of sense, God forgive me,' cried the
honest locksmith, stopping in a narrow count to pass his hand across his
eyes, 'I could better afford to lose than Barnaby. We have always been
good friends, but I never knew, till now, how much I loved the lad.'

There were not many in the great city who thought of Barnaby that day,
otherwise than as an actor in a show which was to take place to-morrow.
But if the whole population had had him in their minds, and had wished
his life to be spared, not one among them could have done so with a
purer zeal or greater singleness of heart than the good locksmith.

Barnaby was to die. There was no hope. It is not the least evil
attendant upon the frequent exhibition of this last dread punishment,
of Death, that it hardens the minds of those who deal it out, and makes
them, though they be amiable men in other respects, indifferent to, or
unconsc