ft of your watch.
On the oath of a man who has one step on the threshold of death, the
accusation was unjust. And, fit minister of the laws you represent! you,
who will now pass my doom,--You were the cause of my crimes! My lord,
I have done. I am ready to add another to the long and dark list of
victims who are first polluted and then sacrificed by the blindness and
the injustice of human codes!"

While Clifford spoke, every eye turned from him to the judge, and every
one was appalled by the ghastly and fearful change which had fallen over
Brandon's face. Men said, afterwards, that they saw written there, in
terrible distinctness, the characters of death; and there certainly
seemed something awful and preternatural in the bloodless and haggard
calmness of his proud features. Yet his eye did not quail, nor the
muscles of his lip quiver; and with even more than his wonted loftiness,
he met the regard of the prisoner. But, as alone conspicuous throughout
the motionless and breathless crowd the judge and criminal gazed upon
each other, and as the eyes of the spectators wandered on each, a
thrilling and electric impression of a powerful likeness between the
doomed and the doomer, for the first time in the trial, struck upon the
audience, and increased, though they scarcely knew why, the sensation of
pain and dread which the prisoner's last words excited. Perhaps it might
have chiefly arisen from a common expression of fierce emotion conquered
by an iron and stern character of mind; or perhaps, now that the ashy
paleness of exhaustion had succeeded the excited flush on the prisoner's
face, the similarity of complexion thus obtained made the likeness more
obvious than before; or perhaps the spectators had not hitherto fixed so
searching, or, if we may so speak, so alternating a gaze upon the two.
However that be, the resemblance between the men, placed as they were in
such widely different circumstances,--that resemblance which, as we have
hinted, had at certain moments occurred startlingly to Lucy,--was plain
and unavoidably striking: the same the dark hue of their complexions;
the same the haughty and Roman outline of their faces; the same the
height of the forehead; the same even a displeasing and sarcastic
rigidity of mouth, which made the most conspicuous feature in Brandon,
and which was the only point that deteriorated from the singular beauty
of Clifford. But, above all, the same inflexible, defying, stubborn
spirit,