is it that you set on sticking to the right? Is
this how you are going to encourage the others like me? What do I care
about your death? What's life to me? Let them get their scaffold ready.
I have suffered enough to be put out of my misery. God, I have suffered
enough with one and another. Look at my hands, I say. Look at my wrists,
and say if I care any more." I held my ghastly paws high, and the candle
light shone upon them.

Out of the black shadows came shrieks of women and curses. I saw my
young girl put her hands over her face and slip slowly, very slowly,
from her chair, down out of sight. People were staggering in different
directions. I had had more to say, but I forgot in my concern for the
young girl. The turnkey pulled my sleeve and said:

"I say, that ain't _true_, is it, it ain't _true?_" Because he seemed
not to want it to have been true, I glowed for a moment with the immense
pride of my achievement. I had made them see things.

A minute after, I understood how futile it was. I was not a fool even in
my then half-mad condition. The real feeling of the place came back upon
me, the "Court of Law" of it. The King's Advocate was whispering to the
Attorney-General, he motioned with his hand, first in my direction, then
towards the jury; then they both laughed and nodded. They knew the ropes
too well for me, and there were seven West India merchants up there who
would remember their pockets in a minute. But I didn't care. I had made
them see things.

CHAPTER FIVE

I had shot my bolt and I was going to die; I could see it in the way the
King's Advocate tossed his head back, fluttered his bands, looked at
the jury-box, and began to play with the seals on his fob. The court
had resumed its stillness. A man in some sort of livery passed a square
paper to the Lord Mayor, the Lord Mayor passed it to Lord Stowell, who
opened it with a jerking motion of an ancient fashion that impressed me
immensely. It was as if I, there at the end of my life, were looking at
a man opening a letter of the reign of Queen Anne. The shadows of his
ancient, wrinkled face changed as he read, raising his eyebrows and
puckering his mouth. He handed the unfolded paper to Mr. Baron Garrow,
then with one wrinkled finger beckoned the Attorney-General to him. The
third judge was still asleep.

"What the devil's this?" the turnkey beside me said to his companion.

I was in a good deal of pain, and felt sickly that every pulse of my