soulless! and so ignorant, as not even to
seem to know whether he had ever heard of a Redeemer, or seen His
written Word. It was on a stormy Christmas eve when he begged shelter
in the hut of an old man, whose office it was to regulate the transit
of conveyances upon the road of a great mining establishment in the
neighbourhood. The old man had received him, and shared with him his
humble cheer and his humble bed; for on that night the wind blew, and
the sleet drove, after a manner that would have made it a crime to
have turned a stranger dog to the door. The next day the poor old
creature was found dead in his hut--his brains beaten out with an old
iron implement which he used, and his little furniture rifled and in
confusion. The wretch had murdered him for the supposed hoard of a few
shillings. The snow, from which he afforded his murderer shelter, had
drifted in at the door, which the miscreant, when he fled, had left
open, and was frozen red with the blood of his victim. But it betrayed
a footstep hard frozen in the snow and blood; and the nails of the
murderer's shoe were counted, even as his days were soon to be. He was
taken a few days after with a handkerchief of the old man's upon his
neck. So blind is blood-guiltiness.

Up to the hour of condemnation he remained reckless as the
wind--unrepenting as the flint--venomous as the blind worm. With that
deep and horrible cunning which is so often united to unprincipled
ignorance, he had almost involved in his fate another vagrant with
whom he had chanced to consort, and to whom he had disposed of some of
the blood-bought spoils. The circumstantial evidence was so involved
and interwoven, that the jury, after long and obvious hesitation as to
the latter, found both guilty; and the terrible sentence of death,
within forty-eight hours, was passed upon both. The culprit bore it
without much outward emotion; but when taken from the dock, his
companion, infuriated by despair and grief, found means to level a
violent blow at the head of his miserable and selfish betrayer, which
long deprived the wretch of sense and motion, and, for some time, was
thought to have anticipated the executioner. Would it had done so! But
let me do my duty as I ought--let me repress the horror which one
scene of this dreadful drama never fails to throw over my spirit--that
I may tell my story as a man--and my confession at least be clear.
When the felon awoke out of the death-like trance into w