and
ten who had agreed to doom them; and three others looking on from
behind a wall, so near as to enable them to see it all, under the
fitful light of the stars! Nineteen of them engaged round one small
cabin, of whom five were to die that night;--and as to ten others, it
cannot but be hoped that the whole ten may pay the penalty due to the
offended feelings of an entire nation!

It may be that it shall be proved that some among the ten had not
struck a fatal blow. Or it may fail to be proved that some among the
ten have done so. It will go hard with any man to adjudge ten men to
death for one deed of murder; and it is very hard for that one to
remember always that the doom he is to give is the only means in our
power to stop the downward path of crime among us. It may be that
some among the ten shall be spared, and it may be that he or they who
spare them shall have done right.

But such was not the feeling of Captain Yorke Clayton as he discussed
the matter, day after day, with Hunter, or with Frank Jones, upon the
lawn at Castle Morony. "It would be the grandest sight to see,--ten
of them hanging in a row."

"The saddest sight the world could show," said Frank.

"Sad enough, that the world should want it. But if you had been
employed as I have for the last few years, you would not think it sad
to have achieved it. If the judge and the jury will do their work as
it should be done there will be an end to this kind of thing for many
years to come. Think of the country we are living in now! Think of
your father's condition, and of the injury which has been done to
him and to your sisters, and to yourself. If that could be prevented
and atoned for, and set right by the hanging in one row of ten such
miscreants as those, would it not be a noble deed done? These ten
are frightful to you because there are ten at once,--ten in the same
village,--ten nearly of the same name! People would call it a bloody
assize where so many are doomed. But they scruple to call the country
bloody where so many are murdered day after day. It is the honest
who are murdered; but would it not be well to rid the world of these
ruffians? And, remember, that these ten would not have been ten, if
some one or two had been dealt with for the first offence. And if the
ten were now all spared, whose life would be safe in such a Golgotha?
I say that, to those who desire to have their country once more
human, once more fit for an honest man to live in