Page:The Knife.pdf/30

144 the very hearing of the court, had been carried on between them—all these brought conviction of her knowledge of, if not participation in the bloody deed. If any doubt rested on the jury's mind in favour of the prisoners, it was their duty to give the suspected the full benefit of that doubt. The jury retired; their deliberation was brief, but fatal; and a verdict of guilty was returned against both. The judge recorded the sentence, and pronounced the penalty—death. "Death!" shrieked the female prisoner, and would have fallen with her face to the earth, but for the arm of the officer at her side. The gipsy himself burst into a torrent of blasphemies and revilings, amid which he was forced from the court. A low moaning wind, a small sad rain, and a heavy louring sky, were meet accompaniments to the morning of execution. Slowly through the streets wound the gloomy procession; the windows, the pavement, the road, alike crowded with spectators: all the ordinary tasks of day were suspended—life pausing to gaze on death. Her head bowed on her shoulder, as if it lacked strength to bear up its length of black hair; every shade of colour faded from both lip and cheek, till the face had the fixed and cold rigidity of a corpse, though still beautiful in feature; and the large dark eyes dilated with that look of bewildered terror you see in childhood,—the female seemed stupified and powerless from excess of dread.