Came to his soul as came the air
That heaved his bosom; hope, despair,
Were chastened by a holy faith!
Meek in his life he feared not death.
The day of execution arrived, and every hearth-stone in the great metropolis was shadowed by a knowledge that at an hour to be fixed between sunrise and sunset, a human being was to be strangled to death—forced brutally into the presence of his Maker. Children whispered to one another in the grey dawn as they crept awe-stricken from their little couches. Mothers—those who had hearts—grew sad as they thought of the household ties which the law would that day tear asunder.
I do not say that this law of blood for blood, which some good men cling to so tenaciously, should be altogether abolished. Women who from the natural and just arrangement of social life, have no share in forming laws, can scarcely arrogate to themselves the right of advancing or of condemning those which owe their existence to the greatest masculine intellect; and we, who reason so much from the heart, can never be sure that the angel of mercy, whom we worship, may not sometimes crowd Justice from her seat. But there is no law that should permit a solemn act of justice to become a jubilee for the mob. Executions, if they must darken the history of a nation, should be still as the grave—solemn as the eternity to which they lead.
Two wardens had been placed over the prisoner that night, for the sheriff feared that the poor old man might attempt suicide. It was a useless precaution for one who was so close to death, and yet slept so calmly. There he lay in the deep slumber which is so sweet to old age. The men kept a light in the cell, and it streamed softly over those calm, pale features, revealing a faint smile upon the lips, and the impalpable shadows scattered over his forehead by the white hair that lay around his temples. Sometimes, as the men gazed upon this picture, and thought of the morrow, with all its death horrors, they turned from each other with a sort of terror, and sat with downcast eyes, gazing upon the floor, for it made them heart-sick—the contrast of that peaceful slumber and the brutal death-sleep into which they were guarding the old man.
At the most, it was but a brief gleam of life that the law claimed; and even that had grown faint within the last few days, so faint that it seemed doubtful if the officers of the law would not be compelled to lift its victim to the scaffold, when the hour of sacrifice came. The day dawned quietly, and shed a sort of still, holy light over the slumbering man. Then, for the first time, his keepers remarked hew deathly pale was the serene countenance—how feeble was the breath that scarcely stirred the coarse linen on his bosom.
Everything was still. The cold dawn, the quiet city, and the prison lying heavy and grim in its bosom. All at once this stillness was broken by the fall of a hammer, distinct and sharp as the beat of a death-watch. It made the officers start and look at each other with meaning eyes; but the old man slept on, and the sound might have been the sigh of an angel, instead of the hideous death-signal that it was, for it only disturbed that tranquil slumber pleasantly, as it would seem. A faint smile dawned upon the face, and he folded his hands softly upon his bosom, with a deeper breath, as if some vision of ineffable happiness filled his thought.
It seemed a cruelty to disturb the last sleep he was ever to know on earth, and so the morning deepened, and the prison was filled with that sort of muffled tumult which bespeaks the opening day within those walls, before the old man awoke.