ng this poor fellow, that I may see
you the sooner; and it is bad for both of us to wait long for a
regular meal like dinner. I can't stay longer, it is so hot, and my
nerves were always susceptible.

Yours, MAULEVERER.

If you will come, give me a nod. You know my hour,--it is always
the same.

The judge, glancing over the note, inclined his head gravely to the
earl, who withdrew; and in one minute afterwards, a heavy and breathless
silence fell over the whole court. The prisoner was called upon for his
defence: it was singular what a different sensation to that existing in
their breasts the moment before crept thrillingly through the audience.
Hushed was every whisper, vanished was every smile that the late
cross-examination had excited; a sudden and chilling sense of the dread
importance of the tribunal made itself abruptly felt in the minds of
every one present.

Perhaps, as in the gloomy satire of Hogarth (the moral Mephistopheles of
painters), the close neighbourhood of pain to mirth made the former
come with the homelier shock to the heart; be that as it may, a freezing
anxiety, numbing the pulse and stirring through the air, made every
man in that various crowd feel a sympathy of awe with his neighbour,
excepting only the hardened judge and the hackneyed lawyers, and one
spectator,--an idiot who had thrust himself in with the general press,
and stood, within a few paces of the prisoner, grinning unconsciously,
and every now and then winking with a glassy eye at some one at a
distance, whose vigilance he had probably eluded.

The face and aspect, even the attitude, of the prisoner were well fitted
to heighten the effect which would naturally have been created by any
man under the same fearful doom. He stood at the very front of the bar,
and his tall and noble figure was drawn up to its full height; a glow of
excitement spread itself gradually over features at all times striking,
and lighted an eye naturally eloquent, and to which various emotions at
that time gave a more than commonly deep and impressive expression. He
began thus:--

"My lord, I have little to say, and I may at once relieve the anxiety
of my counsel, who now looks wistfully upon me, and add that that little
will scarcely embrace the object of defence. Why should I defend myself?
Why should I endeavour to protract a life that a few days, more or less,
will terminate, accord