th something of
self-collectedness--albeit slight tremblings might still be seen to
run along his nerves at intervals; and his features collapsed, ever
and anon, into that momentary vacuity of wildness which the touch of
despair never fails to give. I endeavoured to improve the occasion. I
exhorted him, for his soul's sake, and the relief of that which needed
it too much, to make a full and unreserved confession, not only to
God, who needed it not, but to man, who did. I besought him, for the
good of all, and as he valued his soul's health, to detail the
particulars of his crime, but _his eye fell_. That dark enemy, who
takes care to leave in the heart just hope enough to keep despair
alive, tongue-tied him, and he would not--even now, at the eleventh
hour--give up the vain imagination that the case of his companion
might yet be confounded with his, to the escape of both--and vain it
was. It had not been felt advisable so far to make him acquainted with
the truth, that this had already been sifted and decided; and I judged
this to be the time. Again and again I urged confession upon him. I
put it to him that this act of justice might now be done for its own
sake, and for that of the cleansing from spot of his stained spirit. I
told him, finally, that it could no longer prejudice him in this
world, where his fate was written and sealed, for that his companion
_was reprieved_. I knew not what I did. Whether the tone of my voice,
untutored in such business, had raised a momentary hope, I know not,
but the revulsion was dreadful. He stared with a vacant look of sudden
horror--a look which those who never saw cannot conceive, and which
(the remembrance is enough) I hope never to see again--and twisting
round, rolled upon his pallet with a stifled moan that seemed tearing
him in pieces. As he lay, moaning and writhing backwards and forwards,
the convulsions of his legs, the twisting of his fingers, and the
shiverings that ran through his frame were terrible.

To attempt to rouse him seemed only to increase their violence, as if
the very sound of the human voice was, under his dreadful
circumstances, intolerable, as renewing the sense of reality to a
reason already clouding, and upon the verge of temporary delirium. He
was the picture of despair. As he turned his face to one side, I saw
that a few, but very few hot tears had been forced from his glassy and
blood-shot eyes; and in his writhings he had scratched one cheek
again