The old woman left her support against the timbers of the gallows, and rested against him. Unconsciously he circled her with one arm. She looked up in his face, and the slow relief of tears gathered in her eyes.
All this had passed very quietly. No one saw it, for but few had heeded the old woman who crept silently after the cortege when it left the jail. As the sheriff led his charge up to the scaffold, a stifled moan had made him pause, and he saw a thin hand steal forth from the crowd and touch that of the prisoner, without seeming to heed the act; for he was a kind man, and guessed who the woman was. Then the strong, brave son came up, and the old woman recognized him with sorrowful gladness; but the crowd was eager for the spectacle of human shame, and cared nothing for that.
Oh, how differently the half brother looked on that scaffold now! He saw the delicate form drooping in the presence of a great multitude. The sunlight fell around her with a soft, mocking radiance. Not even a cloud crept mercifully into the heavens to vail her with shadows. Her eyes were bent on the rough, unjoined boards beneath her feet. The tumult of popular curiosity rose and swelled around her, but she never moved or looked up. Coarse words and harsh revilings passed by her, but save a quiver of the eyelids, you would not have known that she heard them.
As she sat thus meek and still while the minutes of her punishment dropped into eternity, carrying her shame with them, the great multitude around her grew turbulent. After all, what was it to walk so far and stay so long only to see a young girl sitting upon a platform of boards, without giving a sign or lifting her eyes? They had come to see a murderess—something wild and exciting—a scene to frighten their children with in after times, and talk over with the neighbors when subjects of gossip ran low. Why did not the sheriff make her stand up and confess her crime before them all? That would be something to satisfy the law!
As the hour wore on these expressions of discontent grew strong. Men shouted for her to stand up, while the mocking voices of disappointed females scoffed at her with unwomanly fierceness.
All feelings are contagious when humanity crowds itself into masses. Lashed by these jibes the people grew coarse and cruel—the meek silence of the prisoner seemed like obstinacy to them. Her drooping face, half hidden from their eager glances, had no right to evade them thus.
These murmurs of discontent grew turbulent and surged through the crowd like the dashing of spent waves upon a rocky bank—a sea of human faces waved to and fro, white and terrified with conflicting emotions. In all that throng there was, perhaps, not one countenance which expressed indifference; a great painter might have made his name immortal could he have pictured that dense multitude as it really appeared. Men and women looked cruel and hard, as if they longed to drag the miserable young creature down from her place of shame with their own hands and put her to death. Here and there a visage appeared which seemed to express something akin to pity; but the most tender-hearted would hardly have ventured, amid that excited populace, to have expressed a word of sympathy.
In the midst of this tumult Rice heard a voice close to his elbow, which hissed in his ear like a serpent. A rough looking man stood by him with a face full of cruel mockery uplifted to the gallows. He stooped down and spoke to a lad who stood near:
"Go and give the halter a jerk, my little fellow, and I'll pay ye a ninepence the minute it's done. If you pull her off so much the better; I'll make the ninepence a shilling!"
These were the words which made Rice start, and look fiercely around. He saw the boy, an evil-visaged imp, skulking away toward the gallows. Looking back over his shoulder, with a sly, cunning smile.