poor pusillanimous sheep. But the dread judge was
there to efface it.

He gasped aloud, then flung himself violently forward.

"Lord of Heaven!" he stormed. "Was there ever such a canting, impudent
rascal? But I have done with you. I see thee, villain, I see thee
already with a halter round thy neck."

Having spoken so, gloatingly, evilly, he sank back again, and composed
himself. It was as if a curtain fell. All emotion passed again from his
pale face. Back to invest it again came that gentle melancholy. Speaking
after a moment's pause, his voice was soft, almost tender, yet every
word of it carried sharply through that hushed court.

"If I know my own heart it is not in my nature to desire the hurt of
anybody, much less to delight in his eternal perdition. It is out of
compassion for you that I have used all these words--because I would
have you have some regard for your immortal soul, and not ensure its
damnation by obdurately persisting in falsehood and prevarication. But I
see that all the pains in the world, and all compassion and charity are
lost upon you, and therefore I will say no more to you." He turned again
to the jury that countenance of wistful beauty. "Gentlemen, I must tell
you for law, of which we are the judges, and not you, that if any person
be in actual rebellion against the King, and another person--who really
and actually was not in rebellion--does knowingly receive, harbour,
comfort, or succour him, such a person is as much a traitor as he who
indeed bore arms. We are bound by our oaths and consciences to declare
to you what is law; and you are bound by your oaths and your consciences
to deliver and to declare to us by your verdict the truth of the facts."

Upon that he proceeded to his summing-up, showing how Baynes and Blood
were both guilty of treason, the first for having harboured a traitor,
the second for having succoured that traitor by dressing his wounds. He
interlarded his address by sycophantic allusions to his natural lord
and lawful sovereign, the King, whom God had set over them, and with
vituperations of Nonconformity and of Monmouth, of whom--in his own
words--he dared boldly affirm that the meanest subject within the
kingdom that was of legitimate birth had a better title to the crown.
"Jesus God! That ever we should have such a generation of vipers among
us," he burst out in rhetorical frenzy. And then he sank back as if
exhausted by the violence he had used. A moment he w