Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/158

148 European castles, as black and bottomless seemingly, where they dropped their victims, to be brought up, not as these are at night-fall, but in the morn only of the Resurrection.

In two of the cells were three leading bandits of the country awaiting execution. I only saw one of them. He was a youth of twenty, fair-faced, smooth-faced, with calm manners and a mild dark eye: so pretty a lad one rarely sees. Is it possible that he is a chief murderer? Even so. Appearances here, as elsewhere, are deceitful. Yet not so. Leaders are rarely demonstrative men. Byron was not at fault in describing human nature when he painted his chief cut-throat as

and describes him on a balmy eve as he leans over the taffrail and

This youth's mien and meditation were alike calm and bloody. He would have put a shot through the warden as briskly and gayly as through a bird. He was trained in crime, and, though still beardless, was gray in guilt. How many of our worst offenders accomplish their end before they reach a ripe manhood! The gallows has more victims under thirty than over. Sin ripens fast, and the lad of fifteen who casts off parental restraint and plunges into vice, before he is twenty-five is apt to die a debauchee or a demon. Christ and the devil recruit their forces from the youth. A Christian or a criminal is the decision usually made before the twenties are touched. Despise not the converted boy. Nurse his childish piety, lest it become youthful impiety ere you are aware.

Sadly we left the fair young face, so soon to be mould and dust, and came into the bright sunshine. How gloomily glowered that sun! The prison was no longer a palace, but a tomb. We gladly mount and ride away from the grim recesses. You have had enough of the Old; now again for the New.

As we emerge into the outer air our eyes light on chimneys, tall