Then the silence was broken by a soft crashing sound, as if something heavy had dropped a short distance on some hard object.
All present turned their eyes from staring at Eliza to the place whence the sound had come.
The prisoner’s head had fallen forward on the railing in front of him.
One of the officers of the Court touched him on the shoulder.
He did not stir. They lifted him. He moved not.
The faint heart of the man had fluttered with its last pulsation. The evidence had sufficed for him without verdict or sentence. As he had slain his victim, so Fate slew him, painlessly, in a moment!
EPILOGUE.
And what became of them all?
He who does not tell, on the plea that he is “competing with Life,” which never knits up a plot, but leaves all the threads loose, acts unfairly.