nd in the varied fancies of the lookers-on had taken a hundred
shapes, wore its own proper form--a scaffold, and a gibbet.

As the warmth of the cheerful day began to shed itself upon the scanty
crowd, the murmur of tongues was heard, shutters were thrown open,
and blinds drawn up, and those who had slept in rooms over against the
prison, where places to see the execution were let at high prices, rose
hastily from their beds. In some of the houses, people were busy taking
out the window-sashes for the better accommodation of spectators; in
others, the spectators were already seated, and beguiling the time with
cards, or drink, or jokes among themselves. Some had purchased seats
upon the house-tops, and were already crawling to their stations from
parapet and garret-window. Some were yet bargaining for good places, and
stood in them in a state of indecision: gazing at the slowly-swelling
crowd, and at the workmen as they rested listlessly against the
scaffold--affecting to listen with indifference to the proprietor's
eulogy of the commanding view his house afforded, and the surpassing
cheapness of his terms.

A fairer morning never shone. From the roofs and upper stories of these
buildings, the spires of city churches and the great cathedral dome were
visible, rising up beyond the prison, into the blue sky, and clad in the
colour of light summer clouds, and showing in the clear atmosphere their
every scrap of tracery and fretwork, and every niche and loophole. All
was brightness and promise, excepting in the street below, into which
(for it yet lay in shadow) the eye looked down as into a dark trench,
where, in the midst of so much life, and hope, and renewal of existence,
stood the terrible instrument of death. It seemed as if the very sun
forbore to look upon it.

But it was better, grim and sombre in the shade, than when, the day
being more advanced, it stood confessed in the full glare and glory of
the sun, with its black paint blistering, and its nooses dangling in the
light like loathsome garlands. It was better in the solitude and gloom
of midnight with a few forms clustering about it, than in the freshness
and the stir of morning: the centre of an eager crowd. It was better
haunting the street like a spectre, when men were in their beds, and
influencing perchance the city's dreams, than braving the broad day, and
thrusting its obscene presence upon their waking senses.

Five o'clock had struck--six--seven--and