Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/334

 sweat on my brow. The whole of England seemed already collected in that square. Tier upon tier, multitude on multitude, were swaying, elbowing, and jostling below, marvellously cheerful but awfully intent. The tall, gaunt scaffold raised upon a platform in their midst, with a treble file of bright-armed and red-coated soldiers standing round it, was a very lodestone that drew every face thereto. The blood went slow within me as I gazed at this fretful mass, whose heavy buzz of talk was at intervals succeeded by the brisk roaring of a pot-house song. The cold, grey winter morning appeared a proper background for this sordid scene, I thought, whilst the high dun-coloured houses that reared themselves on every side, quick with their throngs of eager witnesses, seemed quite in harmony with the horrid gloom of the tragedy so soon to be enacted.

I was still in excellent good time. The condemned man was not due for a full half-hour yet. My invited guests were beginning to arrive, however, but everything had been ordered excellently well. The room was large enough to accommodate two windows, and these had been removed, and several rows of chairs had been placed behind their apertures, and so skilfully arranged that twenty persons could be gratified with a view.

The first of my kind friends to appear was a certain Mrs. Jennings, an obese and comfortable person, with a perfect confidence in, and admiration for, herself. This was not assumption either, seeing