Up to the hour of condemnation, he remained reckless as the wind--unrepenting as the flint--venomous as the blind-worm. With that deep and horrible cunning which is so often united to unprincipled ignorance, he had almost involved in his fate another vagrant with whom he had chanced to consort, and to whom he had disposed of some of the blood-bought spoils. The circumstantial evidence was so involved and interwoven, that the jury, after long and obvious hesitation as to the latter, found both guilty; and the terrible sentence of death, within forty-eight hours, was passed upon both. The culprit bore it without much outward emotion; but when taken from the dock, his companion, infuriated by despair and grief, found means to level a violent blow at the head of his miserable and selfish betrayer, which long deprived the wretch of sense and motion, and, for some time, was thought to have anticipated the executioner. Would it had done so! But let me do my duty as I ought--let me repress the horror which one scene of this dreadful drama never fails to throw over my spirit--that I may tell my story as a man--and my confession at least be clear. When the felon awoke out of the deathlike trance into which this assault had thrown him, his hardihood was gone; and he was reconveyed to the cell, in which he was destined agonizingly to struggle out his last hideous and distorted hours, in a state of abject horror which cannot be described. He who felt nothing--knew nothing--had now his eyes opened with terrible clearness to one object--the livid phantasma of a strangling death. All the rest was convulsive despair and darkness. Thought shudders at it--but let me go on, [He visits the murderer in prison, accompanied by the clergyman.] I undertook to pass with the murderer--his LAST NIGHT--_such_ a last!-- but let me compose myself. * * * * * It was about the hour of ten, on a gusty and somewhat raw evening of September, that I was locked up alone with the murderer. It was the evening of the Sabbath. Some rain had fallen, and the sun had not been long set without doors; but for the last hour and a half the dungeon had been dark, and illuminated only by a single taper. The clergyman of the prison, and some of my religious friends, had sat with us until the hour of locking-up, when, at the suggestion of the gaoler, they departed. I must confess their "good night," and the sound of the heavy door, which the gaoler locked after him, when he went to accompany them to the outer-gate of the gaol, sounded heavily on my heart. I felt a sudden shrink within me, as their steps quickly ceased to be heard upon the stone stairs--and when the distant prison door was finally closed, I watched the last echo. I had for a moment forgotten my companion.