Chapter VI: Part 6

Two or three days passed off in this way, without the slightest amelioration of his condition. The efforts of Miss B---- had been repeated often without effect. As she expressed herself to me, he would neither eat nor speak, sleep nor weep. "He has not," she added, "even muttered her name. His heart seems utterly broken; and time and the power of Heaven alone will effect a change." Such is the common philosophy of sorrow: time is held forth as all-powerful, all-saving; and while I admit its force, I only insist for the certainty of the existence of exceptions. The eighth day had passed without any support having been taken to sustain the system. A course of maceration, that had been going on during his wife's illness, was thus continued; yet, in the few words I occasionally drew from him, there was no indication of anything like the sullen determination of the suicide; the cause lay in the total cessation of the powers of the stomach--a consequence of the cerebral pressure, whose action is felt not where it operates primarily, but in the heart and other organs, where it works merely by sympathy.

It was on the evening of the eighth day after the funeral, as I have it noted, that I called to see if any change for the better had been effected by the ministrations of his sister. She sat by his bedside, with the Bible placed before her, from which she had been reading passages to him. His face was turned to the front of the bed, but he did not seem to be in any way moved by my entrance. All the efforts his sister had made to get him to enter into the spirit of the passages she had been reading had been fruitless; nor had he as yet made the slightest allusion to the cause of his illness, or mentioned the name of his deceased partner. A few words of no importance, and not related to the circumstances of his grief, were wrung from him painfully by my questions; but it seemed as if the language that represents the things of the world had lost all power of charming the ear; the deadness that had overtaken the heart like a palsy, was felt from the fountain of feelings, to the minute endings of the nerves; and the external senses, which are the ministers of the soul, had renounced their ordinary ministrations to the spirit that heeded them not. Only once his sister had observed a slight moisture rise for a moment in his eye, as she touched some tender traits of the character of the departed; but it passed away rather as an evidence of the utter powerlessness of nature, in a faint heave of the reactive energy, telling at once how little she could perform, yet how much was necessary to overcome the weight by which she was oppressed. I sat for some moments silent by the side of the bed, and meditated a recourse to some more strenuous effort directed to his sense of duty as a parent; though I was aware, that until the heart is in some degree relieved, all such appeals are too often vain, if not rather attended with unfavourable effects, but, in extreme cases, we are not entitled to rest upon the generality of theories where so various and mutable an essence as the human mind is the object to which they are to be applied. I was on the point of making a trial, by recurring to the position of his son and daughter, when I heard the sound of a horse's feet approaching, with great rapidity, the door. The sister started; and I could hear Martha open the window above, to ascertain who might be the visiter. In another moment the outer door opened with a loud clang. Some one approached along the passage, in breathless haste. He entered. It was George B----, under the excitement of some strong internal emotion; his eyes gleaming with a fearful light, and his limbs shaking violently. He stood for a moment as if he were gathering his energies to speak; but the words stuck in his throat, the sounds died away amidst the noise of an indistinct jabbering. I noticed the eye of his father fixed upon him, betraying only a very slight increase of animation; but even this extraordinary demeanour of his son did not draw from him a question; so utterly dead to all external impulses had his grief made him, that the harrowing cause of so much excitement in his son, remained unquestioned by the feelings of the parent. In another moment the youth was stretched across the bed, locking the father in his embrace, and sobbing out inarticulate words, none of which I could understand. The aunt was as much at a loss to solve the mystery of the violent paroxysm as myself; for some time neither of us could put a question; the sobbings of the youth seemed to chain up our tongues by the charm of the eloquence of nature's impassioned language. Meanwhile, Martha entered, ran forward to the bedside, lifted her brother from the position which he occupied, and seated him, by the application of some force, on the empty chair that stood by the side of the bed.

"What is the matter, George?" she cried; the question was repeated by the aunt, and the eyes of the parent sought languidly the face of the youth, which was, however, now covered by his hands. The question was more than once repeated by both the aunt and myself; the father never spoke, nor could I perceive a single ray of curiosity in his eye. He seemed to await the issue of the son's explanation, heedless what it might be--whether the announcement of a great or a lesser evil--its magnitude, though transcending the bounds of ordinary bearing, comprehending every other misfortune that fate could have in store for him, being, whatever its proportions, as nothing to the death-stricken heart of one whose hope was buried.

"This is scarcely a time or an occasion, George," said I, "for the manifestation of these emotions. If the cause lies in the grief, come back with increased force, for the death of your mother, you should have known that there is one lying there whose load is still greater, and who is, unfortunately, as yet, beyond the relief which, as your agitation indicates, nature in the young heart is working for you."

"The death!--the death!" he muttered in a choking voice; "but there is something after the death that is worse than the death itself."

"Are you distracted, George?" said the aunt. "This Bible was the hand-book and the rule of your mother's conduct in this world. A better woman never offered up her prayers at the fountain of the waters of immortal life; no one that ever lived had a better right to draw from the blessing, or better qualified for enjoying it as she now enjoys it. She is in heaven; and will you say that that is worse than death?"

"You speak of her spirit, aunt," replied he, as he still covered his face with his hands. "Her spirit is there!"--and he took away one of his hands from his face and pointed to heaven--"There, where the saints rest, does my mother's soul rest; but, O God, where--where is the body?"

A thought struck me on the instant. I was afraid to utter it. I looked at the father, and suspected, from the sudden light of animation that started to his eye, that the gloom of his mind had at last been penetrated by the thought which had suggested itself to me.

"Where is the body!" responded the aunt. "Why, George, where should it be but in C---- churchyard, beneath the stone that has told the virtues of her ancestors, and will, in a short time, declare her own, greater than those of her kindred that have gone before?"

"It is on Dr M----'s table!" cried the youth, starting to his feet, and again throwing himself violently on the chair. "I purchased it; paid the price for it; and recognised it only when the dissecting-knife was in my hand!" Every one started aghast; terror froze up the issues of speech; a deep groan issued from the bed-ridden patient; he beckoned me to his ear. "Tell the women to go out," he whispered, as he twisted his body convulsively among the bedclothes.

I complied with his request; and the aunt, seizing Martha, who stood as if she had been transfixed to the floor, dragged her out of the room. In the passage, I heard a loud scream; and, in a moment, all was again silence. Mr B----, without uttering a word, raised his feeble body from the bed, and came forth, the spectre of what he was only a few weeks before. His limbs, which were reduced to bony shanks, covered with shrivelled skin, seemed totally unable to support even the decayed, emaciated frame. He staggered as he reached the floor; but, recovering himself, stood firm, and then proceeded to his wardrobe, from which he drew his vestments, and proceeded to attire himself.

"An hour since," he said, in a slow, solemn voice, "I thought these clothes would never again be on my body. My only hope was the winding-sheet, and that grave which has been robbed."

"George may have been deceived," said I, as he was proceeding to dress himself. "I have often thought that I saw resemblances to deceased friends in the features of subjects in the dissecting-room."

"The grave will test it," answered he, with a deep groan, as he proceeded slowly, but resolutely, to put one garment after another on his skeleton body.

He was at length dressed; and, proceeding to the kitchen, he appeared again, in a short time, with a lighted lantern in his hand, the light of which, as it threw its beam on his sallow face--for the candle had, meanwhile, burned down into the socket--exhibited, in its lurid glare, the deep-sunken eyes and protruding bones of his emaciated countenance.

"Come, we shall proceed to the grave of my Isabella," said he.

"You are unable," said I. "Your limbs will not carry you that length; and you are, besides, unfitted by the state of your mind and feelings, for an investigation of this kind. Stay here with your son, and I will go to the churchyard and satisfy myself of the deception under which George, doubtless, labours."

"I feel now more than my former strength," he replied. "I am awakened from a death-stupor of the soul; and I feel that within me which will enable me to go through this trial. I will look into my Isabella's grave; will meet with those eyes again--that countenance through which I have read the workings of love in a spirit that is now far from the precincts of the clay. Deny me not; I will be satisfied of this, if I should come back from her grave to complete that which is begun, and is already visible in these shrunken members, that now obey a supernatural power."

There seemed to be no gainsaying him; his manner was inspired and resolute; and I proceeded to accompany him to C---- churchyard. George, who, in the meantime, had been tossing himself in the chair, rose to make one of the party. The agitation under which he still laboured was in direct contrast to the cold stillness of his father; yet the one was a more living expression than the other; and, while my eye shrunk not from the ordinary indications of suffering, I--maugre all the experience of misery I had had--could scarcely look on the animated corpse thus preparing to visit the grave where the object of all his hopes and affections in this world had been buried, and might now be found to have been desecrated by the knife of the anatomist. We went forth together. George's horse still stood at the door, reeking and bloody. I requested Mr B---- to mount, as we had a full mile to go to the burying-ground, and I deemed it utterly impossible that he could accomplish the distance. He did not answer me, but proceeded onwards with a firm step, in the face of a cold, bleak, east wind, that moaned mournfully among a clump of trees that skirted the road. Some flakes of snow were winging through the air--driven now by the breeze, or lingering over our heads as if afraid to be soiled by the earth, which we were bent to open where the dead then lay--or some time before lay--a mass of putrefaction; yet dear to the feelings of the bereaved, and sought now with greater avidity than when the body was arrayed in the smiles of beauty, and filled with living, breathing love. The husband spoke nothing; and George was silent, save for the deep sobs that burst from him as he looked upon the woe-worn form of his father, who stalked away before us like a creature hurrying to the grave to seek the home there from which a troubled spirit had removed him in the dark hour of night. In this way we wandered on. I was not in a mood to speak. The occasion and the scene depressed me more than ever did the prospect of a deathbed, or the sight of a patient about to submit to a painful and dangerous operation. My habits of thought are little conversant with the poetry of nature, or of man's condition in this stage of suffering--the duties of an arduous profession are exclusive of those dreamy moods of the mind, which have little in common with the doings of every-day life; yet, on this occasion, I felt all the inspiration of the sad muse; and, were I to endeavour to account for it, I could only seek for the cause in the aspect of the night, and the unusual nature of the vocation, operating, at the moment, on a mind loosened from the cares of my profession.

In a much less time than I could have anticipated, from the weak condition of Mr B----, we arrived at the churchyard--a solitary spot, surrounded with an old grey dyke, at the back of which rose in deep shade a wood of firs. The snow lay on the top of the walls, and on the higher branches of the firs, reminding one of streaks of white clouds in the sky, as the darkness of the night, enveloping the lower portions, kept them almost from our view. From a small house at the ridge of the fir-belt, a slight ray of light beamed forth, and, striking upon the top of a monument placed against the wall, exhibited the left all around in deeper gloom. Without uttering a word, Mr B---- made up to the house, and, knocking at the door, a young female appeared. She uttered a scream, and ran back, doubtless from the pale and death-like appearance presented by the face of the visiter. Her place was momentarily supplied by the sexton, who, the moment he saw Mr B----, shrunk back in what I conceived to be conscious fear. I was standing behind, and noticing, what I thought, the guilty expression of the man's face, concluded unfavourably for the sad hope of my friend.

"I have reason to believe that there have been resurrectionists in your churchyard, James," said Mr B---- mournfully.

"Impossible!" replied the sexton; "we have been guarding the ground for some time past. It is a dream, Mr B----; many relations are troubled by the same fears. It was only yesterday that I opened a grave to satisfy the wishes of Mrs G----, whose husband was buried a week ago. The body was as safe as if it had been in her own keeping. Take my advice; be satisfied there is no cause of apprehension; you forget the sacred nature of my trust."

"I can only be satisfied by an examination of the grave," replied Mr B----. "I insist upon having this satisfaction. The cemetery is my property, and I have a right to examine it."

The man hesitated, and said that his assistant was from home. But the bereaved husband was not to be thus diverted from his purpose. He stood resolutely with the lantern in his hand, and demanded admittance into the churchyard. The man at length reluctantly took down the key from a nail in the passage, and bringing another lantern with him, led us to the door, which, in the midst of many grumblings, he opened. He then led the way over the snowy hillocks to nearly the middle of the burying-ground, where the grave of Mrs B----, headed by an ornamented stone, was exhibited to us. Mr B---- bent down, and, moving the lantern backwards and forwards, examined it slowly and carefully, casting his eye over the snow, which presented an unbroken appearance, and examining every chink, as if he there found an evidence of the truth of George's statement.

"That grave has not been touched," said the man. "The head of it is the part to judge by. You will find the turf lies whole and unbroken under the wreath."

"It may be as you say," replied Mr B----, as he bent down in his examination; "but the late snow may have removed the traces of the opening. I cannot return home till I am satisfied. My own bones must mix with those of my Isabella. Proceed to open the grave; I myself will assist you."

At that moment a figure was seen gliding alone amidst the tombstones. It had all the legitimate whiteness like the ideal spirit. I stood and gazed at it, and George's eyes were also fixed upon it; Mr B---- paid no attention; he was too intent upon the investigation he was engaged in; and the grave-digger, whose head was down, did not notice it. I said nothing; but George, pointing to it as it approached, cried--

"See, see! what is that?"

The sexton looked up, and cried--"It is David. He has been out, and is covered with snow. He comes in good time."

It was even so. The man approached, and the implements having been procured, they set about opening the grave. Mr. B---- stood motionless, his head hanging down, and deep sighs occasionally coming from his breast, mixed with the quick breathing of the men, as they plied their shovels. He still held the lantern in his hand, by the light of which the group before me is brought out in faint relief. The silence around was signally that of a churchyard; for the fir belt shrouded the scene from the night breeze, and there was only occasionally heard a low, mournful gust, as it died among the branches of the trees. On that spot only there was quick breathing action. The men had got down pretty far into the grave; and, as they brought their heads within the ray of the lantern, in their acts of throwing up the earth, their flushed faces contrasted strongly with the cadaverous countenance of the husband, who leant over them, watching every motion, and intent upon the expected stroke of the shovel upon the coffin lid. The recollection of the attributes of the German ghoul came over me; nor did the difference between the beings, the motives, and the actions, prevent me from conjuring up the similitude, so unlike a human being did he appear in his complexion, his fixed, dead-like stare into the grave, and the perfect stillness of his body, as he crouched down to be nearer to the object of his search. At length, the sound was heard, the rattle on the coffin lid. The victim's ear seemed chained to the sound, as if he could have augured from it whether or not the chest was empty. In a short time,

"The heavy moil that shrouds the dead"

was entirely removed. The sexton now took his own lamp down into the grave. The screw-nails were undone, the lid was raised, and the body of Mrs B----, arrayed in her winding-sheet and scalloped sere-clothes, was seen, by the sickly, yellow gleam of the lantern, lying in the stillness and placidity of death--

"For still, still she lay,
With a wreath on her bosom."

One of the men now came out, and Mr B---- descended into the grave. He lifted off the face-cloth, gazed on the clay-cold face, touched it, and now was opened the

"Sacred source of sympathetic tears."

He burst into a loud paroxysm; and, as if nature had been to take her revenge for her sufferings, under the freezing influence of his sorrow, he wept as if there had been to be no end of his weeping. It was latterly found necessary to force him out of the grave; though, as I was informed by George, he had shrunk from the view of the dead body of his wife, while it lay in the house, and before it was interred. The lid was again placed on the coffin, the screws fixed, and the grave filled up. Mr B---- slipped a guinea into the hand of the sexton, and we took our way back to the town. George informed us, as we went, that he had been for several nights haunted by the image of his mother; and could only thus account for the conviction that had seized him, that the body of the female he had seen in the dissecting-room was that of his parent. It is a remarkable fact, and the one which chiefly induced me to give this narrative, that the scene I have now described wrought so powerfully on the feelings of Mr B----, that the form of his grief was entirely changed. During the whole of the subsequent night, he wept intensely--nature was relieved--his sorrow was mollified into one of those

"Moods that speak their softened woes;"

and time soon wrought its accustomed amelioration. I never saw one who seemed more certainly doomed to the fate of the heart-stricken; and, however fanciful it may seem, I attribute to the mistake of his son the restoration of the father.

THE CONDEMNED.

I believe it was Fontenelle who said that, if he were to have been permitted to pass his life over again, he would have done everything he did in the world, and, of course, consented to suffer what he had suffered, in consideration of what he had enjoyed. I have heard the same statement from others. A very learned and ingenious professor in the north, whose lucubrations have often cast the effulgence of his rare genius over the pages of the Border Tales, has no hesitation in declaring that he would gladly consent to receive another tack of existence in this strange world, with all its pains and penalties, were it for nothing but to be allowed to witness the curious scenes, the startling occurrences, the humorous bizarrerie of cross-purposes, the conceits, the foibles, the triumphs of the creature man. Moore the poet has somewhere said, that he would not consent to live his life over again, except upon the condition that he were to be gifted with less love and more judgment--probably forgetting that in that case he would not have been the author of "Lallah Rookh;" though, mayhap, of a still drier life of Sheridan than that which came from his pen. I have often put the question to patients, and have found the answer to be regulated by the state of their disease. Upon the whole, it requires a very sharp, bitter pang, indeed, to extort the confession, that they would not accept another lease of life. If men were not Christians, they would choose, I think, to be Pythagoreans, were it for nothing but the slight chance they would enjoy of passing into some state of existence not in a remote degree different from that which they have declared themselves sick of a thousand times before they died. Sick of it as many, however, say they are, they would all live "a little and a little longer still," when the dread hour comes that calls them home. These remarks have been suggested by the following passage in my note-book:--"17th August, ----, case of Eugene D----, in the jail of ----. Extraordinary example of the _amor vitae_." I find I had jotted a number of the details; but such was the impression the scene of that tragedy of life produced in me, that even now, though many years have passed, I recollect the minutiae of the drama as distinctly as if I had witnessed it yesterday. I was indeed interested in the case more than professionally; for the subject of it was an early companion of my own, and was, besides, calculated, from his acquirements, and a free, open generosity of spirit, to produce a deep interest in the fate which, in an unhappy hour, he brought upon himself. It was on the forenoon of the day I have mentioned, that the under turnkey of the prison of ---- came in breathless haste, and called me to a prisoner. It was Eugene D----. I was at the moment occupied in thinking of the youth. He had forged a bill upon his father, Mr. D----, a wealthy merchant; and it was very clearly brought out, in evidence that he applied the money to extricate a friend from pecuniary embarrassments. The father had paid the bill; but the legal authorities had prosecuted the case; and he, at that moment, lay in jail a criminal, condemned to die. The gallows was standing ready to exact its victim within two hours; the post from London would arrive in an hour with or without a reprieve. His father and mother, what were they then doing, thinking, suffering? On them and him I was meditating when the words of the turnkey fell upon my ear.

"What has occurred?" was my question to the messenger.

"Eugene D----, the condemned criminal, has taken some poisonous drug," said he, "and the provost has sent me for you to come to his relief."

I meditated a moment. It might have been as well, I thought, for all parties, that I had not been called, and that the drug, whatever it was, might be allowed to anticipate the law, but I had no alternative; I was called in my official capacity; and then a messenger might still arrive from London. I 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 or no chance," he cried, as I proceeded with my assistant, who now entered, to apply the remedies; "I would yet live the two hours! I had no sooner swallowed the drug, than I thought I had intercepted the mercy of heaven; life seemed--and, oh, it even now seems--sweeter than ever, and death still more dreadful! Quick--quick--quick! The poison is busy with my heart. I would give a world for even these two hours of life and hope--small, small as that is!"

I proceeded with the application of the usual remedies. A portion, but only a portion of the laudanum, had been taken off; and the next efficient remedy was motion, to keep off the sleepy lethargy that drinks up the fountain of life. Two men were got to drag him as violently as possible along the floor, leaving him enough of his own weight to force him to use his limbs. I noticed that he struggled with terrible energy against the onset of the subtle agent; exhibiting the most signal instance I ever beheld of the power of that hope which seems to be consistent with life itself. Already an eighth part of the apparent period of his sojourn upon earth had passed. Seven quarters more would, in all likelihood, bring him to the scaffold, and, by resisting my energies to counteract the effects of the poison, he might have eluded the grim arm of the law, by a death a thousand times less dreadful. Every now and then, as the men dragged him along, he turned his eyes to me, and asked the hour. Sometimes he repeated the question within two minutes of my answer. As often was his ear directed to the street, to try to catch the sounds of a coach, or the feet of a horse; and then he redoubled his energies to keep off the onset of the lethargy, which I told him was most to be feared. The operation was persevered in; but the men informed me they thought he was gradually getting heavier on their hands, and I noticed his eye, at times, get so dull that he seemed to be on the eve of falling asleep and sinking. Another quarter of an hour soon passed; and in a little further time, the bailies and chaplain would find it their duty to come and prepare him for his fate--alas! now indeed so certain, that no reasonable thought could suggest even the shadow of a hope; a reprieve, so near the time of execution, would not have been trusted to the mail, and a messenger would have arrived, by quick stages, long before; unless there had, indeed, been any fault in the government authorities, in tampering with a man's life within an hour of his execution. If I had not been under the strict law of professional discipline, I would certainly have allowed him to lie down and pass into death or oblivion. I had, however, my duty to perform; and, strange as it may appear, that duty quadrated with the wishes of the young man himself; who, as he struggled with the demon that threatened to overpower him, seemed to rise in hope as every minute diminished the chance of his salvation. By the increased energies of the men, he was again roused into a less dull perception of sounds, and I could perceive him start as the rattle of the wheels of a carriage was heard at the jail door. He fixed his half-dead, staring eye in my face, and muttered, with a difficult effort of his sinking jaws--

"Is that it--is that it?--I hear a carriage wheels, and they have stopped at the door."

As he uttered the words, it appeared as if he again exerted himself to keep the enemy, who still threatened him, at bay. I replied nothing; for I suspected that the carriage brought only some official, or, probably, some mourner, to see him, previous to the fatal scene--that scene which, in all likelihood, I was endeavouring to render more heart-rending to his friends and spectators, by keeping alive the vital spark, that might only serve to make him conscious of pain. It appeared to be too evident that he had increased tenfold the misery of his situation; for the stern law would admit of no excuse, and if he was not able to walk to the scaffold he would be carried; yet, if I remitted my endeavours to keep in life, I might, in the event of the looked-for reprieve still arriving, be liable to be accused, by my own conscience, of having been as cruel as the law itself. The door of the jail now opened, and a turnkey told me that the usual time had arrived when the officials began their preparatory duties. I replied that it was in vain to attempt, at present, the performance of these sacred rites; the prisoner was wrestling with death; and, if the exertions of the men, who kept still dragging him backwards and forwards, were remitted, he would sink, in a few minutes, into insensibility. I noticed the eye of poor Eugene turned imploringly upon me, as if he wished to know who it was that had arrived in the carriage. I merely shook my head; and the sign was no sooner made than his chin fell down on his breast; his limbs became weaker, his knees bent, and if the supporters had not exerted themselves still farther, he would have sunk. But the men still performed their duty, and dragged him hurriedly along, scarcely now with any aid from his feet, which, obeying no impulse of the loose and flaccid muscles, were thrown about in every direction, with, a shuffling, lumbering noise, and a clanking of the chain, that must have produced an extraordinary effect on those who waited in the adjoining cells. The noise thus produced was indeed all that was heard; for the effect of the poison was such as to take away all power of groaning. I was now doubtful if all the working of the men would be able to keep off much longer the sleepy incubus, for he seemed to have lost almost all power of seconding their efforts; but the door of the jail again opened, and the sound of the grating hinges made him again lift his head. His eye seemed to indicate that he had lost all sense of the passing of the moments, and I could not discover whether he looked for the entry of one bearing his letter of salvation, or of the jailor with his hammer, to knock the chain from his feet, and lead him forth to the scaffold. He again muttered some words as the turnkey was proceeding forward to where I was. I could not make them out, so faint had his voice now become; but one of the men said he wished to know the hour. I told him it was one o'clock--that was just one hour from the appointed termination of his life. The turnkey, meanwhile, whispered in my ear that his father, mother, and sister had arrived. It was the sound of their carriage wheels that we had heard. I enjoined upon the men the necessity of continuing their labours, and went out to prevent the entry of his parents to the witnessing of a scene transcending all their powers of bearing. I found the three standing in the recess where the executioner was sitting in gloomy silence. I took the father and mother by the arms, and hurried them away to the empty cell, where the chaplain and several officials were collected. The turnkey saw his error, and excused himself, on the ground that he was confused by the extraordinary state of affairs within the prison. I ascertained that no notice had been made to his parents of his having taken the drug. They had come to take farewell of him. The mail had arrived, but had brought no intelligence--not even of the petition having been disposed of; and, having given up all hope, their intention was that the mother and daughter should, after the last act of parting, fly to the country, to be as far as possible from the scene of the impending tragedy. I was the first who communicated the tidings of the condition of their son; and the noise in the prisoner's cell, as the men still continued their operations, was a sad commentary on my words. The sister, who was veiled, uttered a shrill scream, and fell back on the floor. The father stood like

"Wo's bleak, voiceless petrifaction,"

moving neither limb nor countenance; his eye was fixed steadfastly on the ground, and a deadly paleness was over his face. The mother, who was also veiled, staggered to a bench--recovering herself suddenly, as some thought, rising wildly, stung her to a broken utterance of some words. I approached her, while Mr H----, the chaplain, was assisting in getting Miss D---- to a chair.

"Let him die!--let him die!" she exclaimed. "Is not his doom inevitable? You will torture my Eugene by keeping in his life till the law demands its victim, and he may be carried--carried! O God!--to a second death, ten times more cruel than that which he is now suffering."

"No rejection of the petition has been intimated," I replied; "and there is hope to the last grain in life's ebbing glass. It is not yet two years since a reprieve came to a prisoner, in this very jail, within three hours of the appointed term of his life. You have spoken from the impulse of an agony which has overcome the truer feelings of a mother and the better dictates of prudence."

"Small, small, indeed, is that hope which a mother may not see through the gloom of a despair such as mine," she replied. "But what means that dreadful noise in Eugene's cell?"

"Only the efforts of the men to keep him awake," replied I. "My duty requires my efforts in behalf of a fellow-creature to the last moment. Reflect for an instant, and the proper feeling will again vindicate its place in the heart of a parent."

"Dreadful alternative!" she replied. "But, sir, hear me. I am his mother, and I tell you, from the divination of a mother's heart, that there will now be no respite. I say it again; it would be a relief to me if I heard, at this moment, that he had escaped by death that tragedy which will now be rendered a thousand times more painful to him and dreadful to me."

The father moved his eyes, and fixed them on the face of the mother of his boy, who, in her agony, thus called for his death in a form which bore even a shade of relief from the horror of what awaited the victim. It was, indeed, an extraordinary request; and told, as no words spoken by mortal had ever told, the pregnancy of an anguish that could seek for alleviation (if I may use so inadequate a phrase) from so fearful an alternative. All were, for a time, now silent, and there was no sound to be heard but the deep sobs of the daughter, as she recovered from her swoon; the struggle in the throat of the mother; and the shuffling and tramping in the cell of the prisoner.

"There is still hope," I whispered in the ear of the mother.

"None--none!" she ejaculated again. "My Eugene! my Eugene!"

She reclined back, with her hands over her face, still sobbing out the name of her son. I pointed to the father to assist her, while I should go again to ascertain the state of the son; but he did not seem to understand me--retaining still his rigid position, and looking with the calmness of despair on the scene around him. Her silence continued but a few moments; and when she opened her eyes again, it was to fix them on me.

"What are you doing?" she exclaimed again. "What, in the name of heaven, are you doing to my Eugene?--Saving him for second, and still more cruel death. It might have been all over. Let me see him--let me see him!"

And she rose to proceed to the cell where her son was confined; but her strength failed her, and she again reclined helplessly back in her seat. The clergyman's ministrations were called for by these uttered sentiments, which seemed so little in accordance with the precepts of Holy Writ, however natural to the bursting heart of the mother, to whom the reported death of her son, in his unparalleled situation might almost have been termed a boon. Retreating from a scene so fraught with misery, I hastened back to Eugene, who was still in the arms of the men. One of them whispered to me that he had spoken when he heard the shrill cry of his sister; but, immediately after, he relapsed again into stupor. The men complained of being exhausted by their efforts to keep him moving. His weight was now almost that of a dead body; and it was only at intervals that he made any struggles to move himself by the aid of his paralysed limbs. Two other individuals were got to relieve them; and the compulsory motions were continued. The lethargy had not altogether mastered the sentient powers; and, the operation having been stopped that I might examine his condition, he lifted his head slowly, looked round him with a vacant stare, and, after a few moments, muttered again the word "hour." I pulled out my watch, and told him that it was twenty minutes past one, he understood me, as I thought; and pronouncing indistinctly "mother," he again sank into apparent listlessness. The men again resumed their work.

Meanwhile, a buzz from without intimated too distinctly that the mob was collecting to witness the fate of their townsman. There was no distinct sound, save that which a mass of people, under the depressing feelings of sorrow, seem to send forth involuntarily--making the air, as it were, thick, and yet with no articulation or distinct noise which can be caught by the ear of one at a distance, or within the walls of a house. Eugene, I am satisfied, was unable to recognise the faint indication. It was well for him. I learned, from the turnkey, that the sound of the hammer in the erection of the gallows had put him almost distracted, and precipitated the execution of the purpose, which he had wished to delay till after the arrival of the mail. I had little doubt that he might now be kept from the grasp of the death-stupor for the remaining three quarters of an hour; but, alas! what would be my triumph? Every minute added to the certainty that I was only preparing for him and his relations greater pain; for, in any view, he could not walk to the fatal spot without as much aid as might have sufficed to carry him; and it was even more than probable that he would be so overcome that that latter operation would require to be resorted to, under the stern sanction of a law that behoved to be put in force within a given time, or not at all. The case I am now describing might suggest some consideration worthy of the attention of our legislators, who, arrogating to themselves a license as wide as the limits of the human mind, deny all manner of discretion to the superintendents of the last execution of the law. We profess to be abhorrent from scenes of torture, as well as, on grounds of policy, hostile to a species of punishment which, indeed, defeats its own ends; and yet I could give more than one case where the substance has been retained in all its atrocity, while the form was veiled by flimsy excuses of a false necessity. My situation was now a very painful one indeed. I was training and supporting the victim for the altar; rescuing from death only to sacrifice him with more bloody rites and a crueller spirit of immolation. The words of his mother, wrung from the agony of a parent's love, rang in my ears; the look of the father--that of imbecile despair--was imprinted on my mind; the hour was fast on the wing; all hope had perished; and before me was the unfortunate youth, handsome, elegant, and interesting, even in the writhings of the master-fiend, suffering a death which was to be, in effect, repeated in another and a crueller form. I had seen him under circumstances of friendship, and the ebullitions of his generous spirit; and I was become, as I pictured to myself, his enemy, who would not allow him to die, to escape from shame and an increased agony of dissolving nature. Will I admit it? For a moment or two I hesitated; and, indeed, had half-resolved to tell the men to stop--the time might yet have sufficed for finishing what he had begun. If he was not dead before two, he would, at least be beyond feeling; and, if the officials chose to take the last step of getting him carried to the gallows, they would in effect be immolating a corpse.

My better and calmer thoughts of duty, however, prevailed; and, in the meantime, I saw the prudence of preventing any meeting between Eugene and his parents, which could tend to nothing but an increase of pain on the side of those who were still able to feel--for, as regarded the young man himself, he was beyond the impulse of the feelings that might otherwise have been called up, even by such a scene. I was not even ill pleased to hear from the under turnkey, that the magistrates had given orders for the departure of the friends; though, for my own satisfaction, I wished that the father, who had still some command of himself, might visit his son for a few minutes, and sanction my proceedings with his approbation. I was informed also by the turnkey, that the father was resisting to the utmost of his power the efforts of the mother to get into the cell. He probably saw too clearly that in the excited condition in which she still remained, the scene might prove disastrous, as affecting either life or reason; and, if I could judge from what I myself felt in spite of the blunting effects of a long acquaintanceship with misery in its various phases, there was good reason for his fears. The scene presented features

"Direr than incubus's haggard train."

I had just looked my watch--it wanted now only twenty minutes of the last hour. The order for the friends to quit the jail was about to be obeyed. The father sent a messenger for me. I repaired to the cell; but to avoid the appeals of the mother and daughter, I beckoned him forth to the lobby. He asked me whether he should see his son now that he was all but insensible, and could not probably recognise him. He feared that he could not stand the scene, for that the calmness he assumed was false! I replied that it certainly required no ordinary firmness; and yet the pain might in some degree be even lessened by the state of stupor and insensibility in which the youth still continued. He fixed his eyes on my face with an expression of forced and unnatural calmness, that pained me more than the death-like inanity of the still beautiful countenance of his son, or the hysterical excitement of the mother. He at last seized my hand and proceeded along to the cell hurriedly, as the turnkey was crying loudly for the friends to depart. We entered and stood for a moment. He stood and gazed at his son, as the latter was still kept moving by the men; but Eugene was apparently unconscious of the presence of his parents. A loud cry from the dense crowd who had assembled to witness the execution, struck my ear. I ran to the window, and saw a man in the act of coming off a horse, whose sides were covered with foam and blood. The cries of the crowd continued, and I could distinctly hear the word "_reprieve_" mixed with the shouts. Mr. D---- was at my back, and I felt his hands press me like a vice. The two men who were supporting Eugene, had also heard the sound, and, paralysed by the extraordinary announcement, they actually let the prisoner sink on the floor. The sound of his fall made me turn; the father had vanished, doubtless to meet the messenger, and communicate the tidings to his wife and daughter. A great bustle in the neighbouring cells succeeded. The two men stood and looked at me in silence. Eugene still lay on the floor, to all appearance insensible. By my orders he was immediately again lifted up, and dragged more violently than ever, backwards and forwards. In a few seconds, the turnkey came in, and struck off the irons, by which his ancle had been so severely torn that the blood flowed from it on the floor. He informed me that he was indeed reprieved, and that the fault of the delay was attributable to the authorities in London. I shouted in the ear of the young man the electric word; he lifted his head, looked wildly around him for a few seconds, and uttered a strange gurgling sound unlike any expression of the human voice I ever heard. I was indeed uncertain whether he understood me or not. In a few minutes more, the cell was crowded--the father, mother, and daughter, the chaplain, the messenger, and several of the officials, all bursting in, to see the condition of the criminal. To this I was not averse; because the more excitement that could be produced in the mind of the youth, the greater chance remained of our being able to keep off the deadly effects of the drug. A thousand times did the parent and mother sound into his dull ear the vocable pregnant with so much relief to him and his friends; but it was not until two hours afterwards that he was so far recovered as to understand perfectly the narrow escape he had made from death. In the evening he was conveyed home in a carriage; and, as they were leaving the jail, he looked out at the grim apparatus which had been erected for him, and which the workmen were removing in the midst of a dense crowd of citizens.

Some days afterwards, Eugene D---- had almost entirely recovered from the effects of the poison. One day when I called, I found him lying on a sofa, with his mother sitting by his side. She took her eyes off her son, and bent them on me till tears filled them.

"Before you entered," she said, "I was talking to Eugene about the request I made to you in the jail on that dreadful day, to let my son die. Repeatedly since, have I thought of my wild words; but they know little of human nature, at least little of the feelings of a mother in my situation, who could brand them as unnatural, or doubt the sanity that recognised fully their effect."

"I am too well apprised, madam," I replied, "of the workings of that organ, whose changes often startle ourselves, to be surprised at the words you then made use of. I knew not, after all, if you did not exhibit as much heroism as Brutus, who condemned his son to death; certainly more than Zaleucus, who condemned his to the loss of an eye, having first submitted to the loss of his own, to make the love of a father quadrate with the justice of the law-giver."

"And what say you to yourself, to whom I owe the safety of my Eugene?" she added.

"An Acesias might have accomplished all that I accomplished, madam--for all I did was to keep off sleep; but, if the secret must needs be told, I had some doubts at least of the humanity of my proceedings, whatever I might have thought of my duty."