ough he would not be seen in court after
his business there was really over, he felt so truly anxious in the
matter that he could not wait to hear the verdict from a third party.

At length the judge took his seat, and the clerk of the crown sat
beneath him ready to record the decision of the jury. A few lighted
candles were stuck about in different parts of the court; but they
were lost in the obscurity of the large, dark, dismal building. The
foreman stood ready with a written and signed paper. The judge asked
him if they had all come to a unanimous verdict, and he answered in
the affirmative; and handed the paper to the clerk of the peace, who
glancing his eye upon it, and half turning round to the judge said in
his peculiar, sonorous voice--

"My lord, the prisoner has been found guilty."

"Gentlemen, is that your verdict?" said the judge; and they said it
was.

The prisoner stood up at the bar erect without moving. He neither
shook nor trembled now. If it were not that his lips were pressed
quite close together, he would have appeared to have heard the
verdict without emotion. Not so Father John; he had been leaning
back, anxiously waiting till the one fatal word met his ear; and then
his head fell forward on the desk, and he sobbed like a woman.

Baron Hamilton immediately placed the black cap on his head, and
proceeded to pronounce the dreadful sentence of death. As he did so,
his voice seemed like some awful, measured tone proceeding from an
immovable figure or statue placed beneath the dusky canopy; so dark
was it--and so cold and stern; so slow and clear were his words and
manner; he must have felt, and felt strongly, as he doomed that young
man to a sudden and ignominious death, for he was no heartless man;
but so powerfully had he schooled his emotions, so entirely had he
learnt to lay aside the man in assuming the judge, that had he been
the stone he looked like, he could not have betrayed less of the
heart within him.

He dwelt at considerable length on the enormity of the offence
of which the prisoner had been found guilty; he stated his own
conviction that the verdict was a just and true one; alluded to
the irreparable injury such illegal societies as that to which the
prisoner too evidently belonged, must do in the country; assured
him that he had no hope for mercy to look for in this world, and
recommended him to seek it from Him who could always reconcile it
with his justice to extend it to th