He then returned to his bed, but the cold and dreary images of death and ruin haunted his imagination, until the night was far spent, when at length he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. By the sympathy expressed at his trial, our readers may easily conceive the profound sorrow which was felt for him, in the district where he was known, from the moment the knowledge of his sentence had gone abroad among the people. This was much strengthened by that which, whether in man or woman, never fails to create an amiable prejudice in its favor--I mean youth and personal beauty. His whole previous character was now canvassed with a mournful lenity that brought out his virtues into beautiful relief; and the fate of the affectionate son was deplored no less than that of the youthful, but rash and inconsiderate lover. Neither was the father without his share of compassion, for they could not forget that, despite of all his penury and extortion, the old man's heart had been fixed, with a strong but uncouth affection, upon his amiable and only boy. It was, however, when they thought of his mother, in whose heart of hearts he had been enshrined as the idol of her whole affection, that their spirits became truly touched. Many a mother assumed in her own person, by the force of imagination, the sinking woman's misery, and poured forth, in unavailing tears, the undeniable proofs of the sincerity with which she participated in Honor's bereavement. As for Flanagan, a deadly weight of odium, such as is peculiar to the Informer in Ireland, fell upon both him and his. Nor was this all. Aided by that sagacity which is so conspicuous in Irishmen, when a vindictive or hostile feeling is excited among them, they depicted Flanagan's character with an accuracy and truth astonishingly correct and intuitive. Numerous were the instances of cowardice, treachery, and revenge remembered against him, by those who had been his close and early companions, not one of which would have ever occurred to them, were it not that their minds had been thrown back upon the scrutiny by the melancholy fate in which he had involved the unhappy Connor O'Donovan. Had he been a mere ordinary witness in the matter, he would have experienced little of this boiling indignation at their hands; but first to participate in the guilt, and afterwards, for the sake of the reward, or from a worse and more flagitious motive, to turn upon him, and become his accuser, even to the taking away of the young man's life--to stag against his companion and accomplice--this was looked upon as a crime ten thousand times more black and damnable than that for which the unhappy culprit had been consigned to so shameful a death.