I do not know how long or short a time my anguish lasted. It may have been half an hour, when the deep tolling of a bell wrought sudden silence in the fetid air. At its first stroke the roar of voices went off and lessened, rolling like a peal of thunder; at its third the quiet of eternity had fallen and consumed the world.
A mist came before my eyes. When it cleared I was aware of a little group on the platform, and one, with a ghastly white face, the center of it.
“Who is it?” I whispered, in intolerable agony.
“Curse you!” growled my next neighbor. “Can’t you hold your tongue and let a cove look?”
A word marred the full relish of his appetite.
I managed to slew my head away from the direct line of vision. A low babble of voices came from the scaffold. He must be reprieved, I thought, with a leap of the heart. I could not conceive voices sounding natural, otherwise, under such fearful circumstances.
Suddenly, as I was on the point of looking once more to ease my horrible tension of mind, there dropped upon my ears a low rumbling flap, and immediately a hoarse murmur went up from the multitude. Then, giving a cry myself, I turned my face. The rope hung down in a straight line, but loop and man were gone.
From the universal murmur, by claps and starts, the old uproar bubbled forth from the faces, till the pent-up street resounded with it. An after-dinner loquacity was on all and the fellow who had cursed me a minute ago addressed me now with over-brimming geniality of information.
“Who’s him, says you? Why, where’s your wits gone, matey? Him was Mul-ler, the greasy furriner as murdered old Briggs.”
The trial had made sensation enough of late, but the date of the poor wretch’s execution I had had no thought of.