Meanwhile, a buzz from without intimated too distinctly that the mob was collecting to witness the fate of their townsman. There was no distinct sound, save that which a mass of people, under the depressing feelings of sorrow, seem to send forth involuntarily--making the air, as it were, thick, and yet with no articulation or distinct noise which can be caught by the ear of one at a distance, or within the walls of a house. Eugene, I am satisfied, was unable to recognise the faint indication. It was well for him. I learned, from the turnkey, that the sound of the hammer in the erection of the gallows had put him almost distracted, and precipitated the execution of the purpose, which he had wished to delay till after the arrival of the mail. I had little doubt that he might now be kept from the grasp of the death-stupor for the remaining three quarters of an hour; but, alas! what would be my triumph? Every minute added to the certainty that I was only preparing for him and his relations greater pain; for, in any view, he could not walk to the fatal spot without as much aid as might have sufficed to carry him; and it was even more than probable that he would be so overcome that that latter operation would require to be resorted to, under the stern sanction of a law that behoved to be put in force within a given time, or not at all. The case I am now describing might suggest some consideration worthy of the attention of our legislators, who, arrogating to themselves a license as wide as the limits of the human mind, deny all manner of discretion to the superintendents of the last execution of the law. We profess to be abhorrent from scenes of torture, as well as, on grounds of policy, hostile to a species of punishment which, indeed, defeats its own ends; and yet I could give more than one case where the substance has been retained in all its atrocity, while the form was veiled by flimsy excuses of a false necessity. My situation was now a very painful one indeed. I was training and supporting the victim for the altar; rescuing from death only to sacrifice him with more bloody rites and a crueller spirit of immolation. The words of his mother, wrung from the agony of a parent's love, rang in my ears; the look of the father--that of imbecile despair--was imprinted on my mind; the hour was fast on the wing; all hope had perished; and before me was the unfortunate youth, handsome, elegant, and interesting, even in the writhings of the master-fiend, suffering a death which was to be, in effect, repeated in another and a crueller form. I had seen him under circumstances of friendship, and the ebullitions of his generous spirit; and I was become, as I pictured to myself, his enemy, who would not allow him to die, to escape from shame and an increased agony of dissolving nature. Will I admit it? For a moment or two I hesitated; and, indeed, had half-resolved to tell the men to stop--the time might yet have sufficed for finishing what he had begun. If