provided myself with the necessary counteracting agents, and
followed the man. I passed the house of his father. The blinds were drawn,
and all seemed wrapped in dead silence, as if there had been a corpse in
the house. Several people were passing the door, and cast, as they went, a
melancholy look at the windows. They had, in all likelihood, seen the
gallows; at least, they knew the precise posture of affairs within the
house. I was inclined to have entered; but I could see no benefit to be
derived from my visit, and hurried forwards to the jail, from the window of
which the black apparatus projected in ghastly array. The post-office in
---- Street was in the neighbourhood, and an assembly of people was
beginning to collect, to wait for the incoming of the mail. There was
sympathy in every face; for the fate of the youth, who had been well
esteemed over the town, for a handsome, generous-minded young man, and the
situation of his parents--wealthy and respectable citizens--had called
forth an extraordinary feeling in his favour. Indeed, thousands had signed
the petition to the King, but forgery was, at that time, a crime of
frequent occurrence, and the doubts that were entertained as to the success
of the application were apparently justified by the arrival of the eleventh
hour. On passing through the jail, I saw the various preparations in
progress for the execution; the chaplain was in attendance; and, in a small
cell, at the end of the apartment from which the fatal erection projected,
there sat, guarded by an officer, from a fear that he would escape, the
executioner himself--

"Grim as the mighty Polypheme."

My guide led me forward, and, in a few minutes, I stood beside Eugene, who,
dressed in a suit of black, lay twisting his body in a chair, making the
chains by which he was bound clank in a fearful manner. A small phial was
on the floor. I took it up, and ascertained, in an instant, that he had
betaken himself to the drug most commonly resorted to by suicides.

"Laudanum!" I exclaimed.

"Yes, yes--as much as would kill two men!" he cried wildly.

The poison had not had time to operate; or rather, its narcotic power had
been suspended by the terrors of an awakened love and hope of life, that
had followed close upon the prospect of death caused by his own act.

"You had a chance for life, Eugene," said I, hurriedly. "A courier may yet
arrive, independently of the mail, which has not yet come."

"Chance