At length the judge took his seat, and the clerk of the crown sat beneath him ready to record the decision of the jury. A few lighted candles were stuck about in different parts of the court; but they were lost in the obscurity of the large, dark, dismal building. The foreman stood ready with a written and signed paper. The judge asked him if they had all come to a unanimous verdict, and he answered in the affirmative; and handed the paper to the clerk of the peace, who glancing his eye upon it, and half turning round to the judge said in his peculiar, sonorous voice—
"My lord, the prisoner has been found guilty."
"Gentlemen, is that your verdict?" said the judge; and they said it was.
The prisoner stood up at the bar erect without moving. He neither shook nor trembled now. If it were not that his lips were pressed quite close together, he would have appeared to have heard the verdict without emotion. Not so Father John; he had been leaning back, anxiously waiting till the one fatal word met his ear; and then his head fell forward on the desk, and he sobbed like a woman.
Baron Hamilton immediately placed the black cap on his head, and proceeded to pronounce the dreadful sentence of death. As he did so, his voice seemed like some awful, measured tone proceeding from an immovable figure or statue placed beneath the dusky canopy; so dark was it—and so cold and stern; so slow and clear were his words and manner; he must have felt, and felt strongly, as he doomed that young man to a sudden and ignominious death, for he was no heartless man; but so powerfully had he schooled his emotions, so entirely had he learnt to lay aside the man in assuming the judge, that had he been the stone he looked like, he could not have betrayed less of the heart within him.
He dwelt at considerable length on the enormity of the offence of which the prisoner had been found guilty; he stated his own conviction that the verdict was a just and true one; alluded to the irreparable injury such illegal societies as that to which the prisoner too evidently belonged, must do in the country; assured him that he had no hope for mercy to look for in this world, and recommended him to seek it from Him who could always reconcile it with his justice to extend it to the repentant sinner. He concluded by ordering that he should be taken back to the place from whence he came, and be brought from thence to the place of execution on the Monday week following, and then and there be hung by his neck till he should be dead.
The assizes were then finished—the judge immediately left the court—the prisoner was taken back to his cell—the lights were extinguished—and when the servants of the sheriff came to lock the door, they found Mr. McKeon still vainly endeavouring to arouse the broken-hearted priest from his ecstasy of sorrow.