lackness of circumstances
that surrounded him, and it would seem that there is but little doubt
as to the complexion of his thoughts! Perhaps, indeed, even in that
terrible and desolate hour one sweet face shone on him, "and dashed the
darkness all away." Perhaps, too, whatever might be the stings of his
conscience, one thought, one remembrance of a temptation mastered and
a sin escaped, brought to his eyes tears that were sweet and healing in
their source. But the heart of a man in Clifford's awful situation is
dark and inscrutable; and often when the wildest and gloomiest external
circumstances surround us, their reflection sleeps like a shadow, calm
and still upon the mind.

The next morning, the whole town of (a town in which, we regret to say,
an accident once detained ourself for three wretched days, and which
we can, speaking therefore from profound experience, assert to be in
ordinary times the most melancholy and peopleless-looking congregation
of houses that a sober imagination can conceive) exhibited a scene of
such bustle, animation, and jovial anxiety as the trial for life or
death to a fellow-creature can alone excite in the phlegmatic breasts
of the English. Around the court the crowd thickened with every moment,
until the whole marketplace in which the townhall was situated became
one living mass. The windows of the houses were filled with women, some
of whom had taken that opportunity to make parties to breakfast; and
little round tables, with tea and toast on them, caught the eyes of the
grinning mobists as they gaped impatiently upwards.

"Ben," said a stout yeoman, tossing up a halfpenny, and catching the
said coin in his right hand, which he immediately covered with the
left,--"Ben, heads or tails that Lovett is hanged; heads hanged, tails
not, for a crown."

"Petticoats, to be sure," quoth Ben, eating an apple; and it was heads!

"Damme, you've lost!" cried the yeoman, rubbing his rough hands with
glee.

It would have been a fine sight for Asmodeus, could he have perched on
one of the house tops of the market-place of --------, and looked on the
murmuring and heaving sea of mortality below. Oh! the sight of a crowd
round a court of law or a gibbet ought to make the devil split himself
with laughter.

While the mob was fretting, and pushing, and swearing, and grinning, and
betting, and picking pockets, and trampling feet, and tearing gowns,
and scrambling nearer and nearer to the doors and wi