When I had placed her
in safety, I came back, and pressed through the crowd to hear the
verdict.
"As I got in, the Recorder's voice fell on my ear, every word like a
funeral knell,--'_May the Lord have mercy on your soul!_'
"I think for a few minutes I lost my senses. I have a confused
remembrance of swaying hither and thither in a crowd; of execration, and
pity, and gaping curiosity; and then I got out, and some one passed me,
whose arm I grasped. It was Mr. A----.
"'Tell me,' I said, 'is there no hope? No recommendation to mercy?
Nothing?'
"He dragged me into a room, and, seizing me by the button, exclaimed--
"'We don't want mercy; we want justice! I say, sir, curse the present
condition of the law! It _must_ be altered, and I shall live to see it.
If I might have addressed the jury--there were a dozen points--we should
have carried him through. Besides,' he added, in a tone that seemed to
apologize for such a secondary consideration, 'I may say to you that I
fully believe that he is innocent, and am as sorry on his account as on
my own that we have lost the case.'
"And so the day is ended. _Fiat voluntas Domini!_"
* * * * *
Yes, Eleanor! Dr.
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