Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/336

 MARK TWAIN

and the wife and child remained until a quarter past eleven at night, and the scenes I witnessed were pitiful to see. The execution was to take place at four in the morning. A little after eleven a sound of hammering broke out upon the still night, and there was a glare of light, and the child cried out &quot;What is that, papa?&quot; and ran to the window be fore she could be stopped, and clapped her small hands, and said: &quot;Oh, come and see, mamma such a pretty thing they are making!&quot; The mother knew and fainted. It was the gallows!

She was carried away to her lodging, poor wom an, and Clayton and I were alone alone, and thinking, brooding, dreaming. We might have been statues, we sat so motionless and still. It was a wild night, for winter was come again for a moment, after the habit of this region in the early spring. The sky was starless and black, and a strong wind was blowing from the lake. The silence in the room was so deep that all outside sounds seemed exag gerated by contrast with it. These sounds were fitting ones ; they harmonized with the situation and the conditions: the boom and thunder of sudden storm-gusts among the roofs and chimneys, then the dying down into moanings and wailings about the eaves and angles; now and then a gnashing and lashing rush of sleet along the window-panes; and always the muffled and uncanny hammering of the gallows-builders in the courtyard. After an age of this, another sound far off, and coming smothered and faint through the riot of the tempest a bell tolling twelve! Another age, and it tolled again.

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