The personal appearance of the prisoner had undergone a woful change during his confinement. Had his own wife seen him at that moment it is doubtful whether she would have recognized her lord. Could it be possible that that frail, tottering, wasted form, and that blanched, sunken-eyed, imbecile-looking countenance were all that were left of the once formidable Robert Gourlay? The sight was one which might have moved his bitterest enemy to tears. His clothing, a world too wide for so shrunken a tenant, hung sloppy and slovenly about him, and it was remarked by a spectator that he had aged fully ten years during the six months that had elapsed since his journey to York in the previous February. His limbs seemed too weak to support him where he stood, and as he leaned with his hands upon the rail in front of him his fingers twitched nervously, while his whole frame visibly trembled. The saddest change of all had been wrought in his once fine eyes. They were of light grey, and their ordinary expression had been more sharp and piercing than is commonly found in eyes of that colour. They had been clear and keen, and expressive of an active, vigorous brain behind them. At present they were wandering, weak and watery, altogether lacking in lustre or expression. They told their sad tale with piteous brevity. The brain was active and vigorous no longer, or, if still active, was so to no definite purpose. The spark of reason was for the time quenched within him. His oratory and his writings were no longer to be dreaded. The man whose large presence had once carried about with it unmistakable evidences of physical and mental power had been reduced to a physical and mental wreck. No man in that closely-packed court-room was now more harmless than he. The Compact had indeed set an indelible mark upon him--a mark which he was to carry to his grave, for during the forty-four years of life that remained to him he was never again the Robert Gourlay of old, and was subject to periodical seasons of mental aberration.