rse in perfect health, with his normal complement of limbs encased in
white leathers. I believe that I expected his legs to drop off on the
road from sheer fatigue.

I knew, of course, that the Lord-Lieutenant had to confirm all
death-sentences in Ireland. From much reading of Harrison Ainsworth, I
insisted on calling the documents connected with this,
"death-warrants." I begged and implored my father to let me see a
"death-warrant." He told me that there was nothing to see, but I went
on insisting, until one day he told me that I might see one of these
gruesome documents. To avoid any misplaced sympathy with the condemned
man, I may say that it was a peculiarly brutal murder. A man at Cork
had kicked his wife to death, and had then battered her into a
shapeless mass with the poker. I went into my father's study on the
tip-toe of expectation. I pictured the Private Secretary coming in
slowly, probably draped for the occasion in a long black cloak, and
holding a white handkerchief to his eyes. In his hand he would bear an
immense sheet of paper surrounded by a three-inch black border. It
would be headed DEATH in large letters, with perhaps a
skull-and-crossbones below it, and from it would depend three ominous
black seals attached by black ribbons. The Secretary would naturally
hesitate before presenting so awful a document to my father, who, in
his turn, would exhibit a little natural emotion when receiving it. At
that moment my mother, specially dressed in black for the occasion,
would burst into the room, and falling on her knees, with streaming
eyes and outstretched arms, she would plead passionately for the
condemned man's life. My father, at first obdurate, would gradually be
melted by my mother's entreaties. Turning aside to brush away a furtive
and not unmanly tear, he would suddenly tear the death-warrant to
shreds, and taking up another huge placard headed REPRIEVE, he would
quickly fill it in and sign it. He would then hand it to the Private
Secretary, who would instantly start post-haste for Cork. As the
condemned man was being actually conducted to the scaffold, the Private
Secretary would appear, brandishing the liberating document. All then
would be joy, except for the executioner, who would grind his teeth at
being baulked of his prey at the last minute.

That is, at all events, the way it would have happened in a book. As it
was, the Private Secretary came in just as usual, carrying an ordinary
officia