Page:Hornung - Rogues March.djvu/173

Rh Tom heard the fate which was now no surprise to him, and bore it accordingly as such verdicts are seldom borne. His fine eyes and fresh young face were radiant and serene with the divine light of innocence and valour; consequently the judge felt called upon publicly to lament “a demeanour both callous and defiant”; and so sincere was the lamentation that his voice broke, his lips trembled, and the concluding remarks of his lordship were perfectly unintelligible from emotion. But here ended the judge’s duty in those days, and the court adjourned for yet another night.

In the morning Thomas Erichsen was brought up for the last time, and condemned to death in thoroughly cold blood by the Recorder of the City of London.

Meanwhile one noteworthy circumstance had occurred. Mr. Harding and his companion, Daintree, had been among the first to leave the court. They thus escaped a scene of some confusion in one of the public galleries, the occupants of which were called to order and made to go out row by row. But so great was the crowd already in the street that to get out at all was a difficulty; to reach one’s coach another and a worse. Mr. Harding eventually found his waiting on Ludgate Hill, and directed the coachman to go by Chancery Lane before getting in after Daintree. Just then a man emerged from the seething crowd in the Old Bailey, and waited an instant at the corner; then the carriage drove down Fleet Street with the man after it at a discreet distance.

Harding and Daintree scarcely spoke a word; they were followed up Chancery Lane and across Holborn by the man, a dilapidated creature with a dreadfully disfigured face.