The prisoner gasped, and turned round to him in amaze. "Yes, I'm innocent!" he said slowly, looking him over from head to foot; "but you--how do you know it?" "I know it by your face," Jerry answered sturdily; "and I know by the other one's face it was him that did it." The sheriff looked on in puzzled wonderment. This was a hitch in the proceedings he had never expected. "Your conduct is most irregular, Stokes," he said at last, stroking his chin in his embarrassment; "most irregular and disconcerting. If you had a conscientious scruple against hanging the prisoner, you should have told us before. Then we might have arranged for some other executioner to serve in your place. As it is, the delay is most unseemly and painful: especially for the prisoner. Your action can only cause him unnecessary suspense. Sooner or later this morning, somebody must hang him." But Jerry only looked back at him with an approving nod. The sheriff had supplied him, all inarticulate that he was, with suitable speech. "Ah, that's just it, don't you see," he made answer promptly, "it's a conscientious scruple. That's why I won't hang him. No man can't be expected to go agin his conscience. I never hanged an innocent man yet--least-ways not to my knowledge; and s'help me heaven, I won't hang one now, not for the Queen nor for nobody!" The sheriff paused. The sheriff deliberated. "What on earth am I to do?" he exclaimed, in despair. "If _you_ won't hang him, how on earth at this hour can I secure a substitute?" Jerry stared at him stolidly once more, after his wont. "If _I_ don't hang him," he answered, with the air of one who knows his ground well, "it's _your_ business to do it with your own hands. 'Wherein fail not at your peril.' And I give you warning beforehand, sheriff, if you _do_ hang him--why, you'll have to remember all your life long that you helped to get rid of an innocent man, when the common hangman refused to execute him!" To such a pitch of indignation was he roused by events that he said it plump out, just so, "the common hangman." Rather than let his last appeal lack aught of effectiveness in the cause of justice, he consented so to endorse the public condemnation of his own respectable, useful, and necessary calling! There was a pause of a few minutes, during which the sheriff once more halted and hesitated; the prisoner looked around with a pale and terrified air; and Jerry kept his eye fixed hard on the gate, like one who really expects a reprieve or a pardon. "Then you absolutely refuse?" the sheriff asked at last, in a despairing sort of way. "I absolutely refuse," Jerry answered, in a very decided tone. But it was clear he was beginning to grow anxious and nervous. "In that case," the sheriff replied, turning round to the jailor, "I must put off this execution for half an hour, till I can get someone else to come in and assist me."