Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/340

 waved it in reply. Almost immediately thereafter the cart was stopped and placed carefully into its position under the noose that dangled from the beam; the soldiers closed up, promptly cleared a convenient space, and stood in a ring with bayonets drawn, whilst the Sheriff, the Chaplain, the Governor of Newgate, and various high dignitaries took up their stations on the scaffold. 'Twas astonishing the brisk precision with which everything was done. Before I could grasp the idea that the condemned was actually at the point of death, the executioner was standing with one foot on the scaffold and another in the cart, tying the criminal's hands behind him. At the same moment the Chaplain produced a greasy, black-backed tome, and began to mumble indistinctly the service for the dead. The whole matter was so fascinating that I could not pluck my eyes from the scene, and though I had a certain dim idea that some strange, vague power was about to intervene, for my life I could not have told just then what it was to be; nay, and should not have greatly felt the loss of it until the bloody drama had been played.

All this time the mob below had been striving towards the scaffold, only to be forced back by the vigorous measures of the guard of soldiers. This, however, was no more than the natural eagerness of a crowd to procure a fuller view, and was perfectly appropriate and good-humoured on the side of both. But as soon as the executioner had confined his victim's wrists, and was engaged in opening his