ings impatient to assist in the funeral obsequies of the
victim of the law. And now a violent surging and commotion in the centre
of the living mass gives token of a fierce quarrel which has ripened to a
fight. Shrieks, yells, and cheers of encouragement issue from a hundred
throats, while a crew of tall and powerful blackguards elbow and trample
their way to the scene of action, and the glazed hats of the police are
seen converging unerringly to the disturbed spot. Then there is the
flourishing of gilded staves, the sound of sturdy blows followed by a roar
of execration, and a gory-visaged culprit is dragged forth, defrauded of
his expected banquet, and consigned to a cell in the nearest station. The
tumult has hardly subsided when another claims attention. A brace of
pickpockets, taking advantage of the fight, are caught in the too
confident exercise of their profession; and these, much easier captives
than the fighting Irishman, are led off in their turn to the same vile
durance.

By this time, weary and actually sore with the repeated violent collisions
I had undergone in sustaining my post, I was glad to make a bargain with
the man perched above me, who, for a bribe of a few pence, allowed me to
effect a footing in his front. I had scarcely accomplished this when the
church-clock in the distance rung out the quarters. The crowd, listening
for this, had been comparatively silent for the last few minutes, and the
note of the bell was acknowledged by a kind of shuddering deprecation for
silence, by the instant uncovering of innumerable heads, and the
involuntary direction of every eye toward the debtors' door. As the fatal
hour at length pealed forth the door was slowly opened, and there came out
upon the scaffold, not the mournful death-procession which all were
awaiting with such intense interest, but its grim herald and precursor,
the crime-honored aristarch of kill-craft, the great stage-manager of the
law's last scene, whose performances are so much relished by the mob--the
hangman, bearing the odious strand of new rope coiled upon his arm. He was
received with a low but universal hum of recognition from the vast
multitude now breathless with the exciting anticipation of what was so
soon to follow. With an apparent perfect unconsciousness of the presence
of a single spectator, he proceeded to mount to the cross-piece of the
gibbet, to which, with an air of professional dexterity, he deliberately
attached the loath