Page:Paul Clifford Vol 3.djvu/308

300 With this address concluded that eventful trial; and while the crowd, in rushing and noisy tumult, bore towards the door, Brandon, concealing to the last, with a Spartan bravery, the anguish which was gnawing at his entrails, retired from the awful pageant. For the next half hour he was locked up with the strange intruder on the proceedings of the Court. At the end of that time the stranger was dismissed; and in about double the same period Brandon's servant readmitted him, accompanied by another man, with a slouched hat, and in a carman's frock. The reader need not be told that the new-comer was the friendly Ned, whose testimony was indeed a valuable corroborative to Dummie's, and whose regard for Clifford, aided by an appetite for rewards, had induced him to venture to the town of, although he tarried concealed in a safe suburb until re-assured by a written promise from Brandon of safety to his person, and a sum for which we might almost doubt whether he would not have consented (so long had he been mistaking means for an end) to be hanged himself. Brandon listened to the details of these