Page:Tales of my landlord (Volume 4).djvu/146

 fian who was to execute it, and at the last awful words, "And this I pronounce for doom," he answered boldly—"My Lords, I thank you for the only favour I looked for, or would accept at your hands, namely, that you have sent the crushed and maimed carcase which has this day sustained your cruelty to this hasty end. It were indeed little to me, whether. I perish on the gallows or in the prison-house. But if death, following close on what I have this day suffered, had found me in my cell of darkness and bondage, many might have lost the sight how a Christian man can suffer in the good cause. For the rest, I forgive you, my Lords, for what you have appointed and I have sustained—And why should I not?—Ye send me to a happy exchange—to the company of angels and the spirits of the just for that of frail dust and ashes—Ye send me from darkness into day—from mortality—to immortality—and, in a word, from earth to heaven!—If the thanks, therefore, and pardon of a dying man can do you good,