beast, my dear
Miss Vickers," he said, returning, in a pause during the examination
of the convicts who had been brought to identify the prisoner, to the
little room where Sylvia and her father were waiting. "He has quite a
tigerish look about him."

"Poor man!" said Sylvia, with a shudder.

"Poor! My dear young lady, you do not pity him?"

"I do," said Sylvia, twisting her hands together as if in pain. "I pity
them all, poor creatures."

"Charming sensibility!" says Meekin, with a glance at Vickers. "The true
woman's heart, my dear Major."

The Major tapped his fingers impatiently at this ill-timed twaddle.
Sylvia was too nervous just then for sentiment. "Come here, Poppet," he
said, "and look through this door. You can see them from here, and if
you do not recognize any of them, I can't see what is the use of putting
you in the box; though, of course, if it is necessary, you must go."

The raised dock was just opposite to the door of the room in which
they were sitting, and the four manacled men, each with an armed warder
behind him, were visible above the heads of the crowd. The girl had
never before seen the ceremony of trying a man for his life, and the
silent and antique solemnities of the business affected her, as it
affects all who see it for the first time. The atmosphere was heavy and
distressing. The chains of the prisoners clanked ominously. The crushing
force of judge, gaolers, warders, and constables assembled to punish
the four men, appeared cruel. The familiar faces, that in her momentary
glance, she recognized, seemed to her evilly transfigured. Even the
countenance of her promised husband, bent eagerly forward towards
the witness-box, showed tyrannous and bloodthirsty. Her eyes hastily
followed the pointing finger of her father, and sought the men in the
dock. Two of them lounged, sullen and inattentive; one nervously chewed
a straw, or piece of twig, pawing the dock with restless hand; the
fourth scowled across the Court at the witness-box, which she could not
see. The four faces were all strange to her.

"No, papa," she said, with a sigh of relief, "I can't recognize them at
all."

As she was turning from the door, a voice from the witness-box behind
her made her suddenly pale and pause to look again. The Court itself
appeared, at that moment, affected, for a murmur ran through it, and
some official cried, "Silence!"

The notorious criminal, Rufus Dawes, the desperado of Port Arthur, the