After a careful review of all the testimony against the prisoner, the conclusiveness of which left no room for a doubt, he told him to abandon all hope of a pardon in this world, concluding, in the terrible words of the law, by the sentence of death,——
“You, Samuel Eustace, will be taken from the bar of this court to the place from whence you came, the jail, and thence to the place of execution, there to be hung by the neck till you are dead—”
“Can I see my priest,——may the priest come to me?” cried the prisoner, fiercely; for not even the appalling solemnity of the moment could repress the savage energy of his nature.
“Miserable man,” said the judge, in a faltering accent, “I beseech you to employ well the few minutes that remain to you in this world, and carry not into the next that spirit of defiance by which you would brave an earthly judgment-seat. And may God have mercy on your soul!”
CHAPTER XL. THE RETRIBUTION.
The sudden flash of intelligence by which young Frank was enabled to connect the almost forgotten incidents of boyhood with the date and the other circumstances of the murder, had very nearly proved fatal to himself. His brain was little able to resist the influence of all these conflicting emotions; and for some days his faculties wandered away in the wildest and most incoherent fancies. It was only on the very morning of the trial that he became self-possessed and collected. Then it was that he could calmly remember every detail of that fatal night, and see their bearing on the mysterious subject of the trial. At first Grounsell listened to his story as a mere raving; but when Frank described with minute accuracy the appearance of the spot—the old orchard, the stone stair that descended into the garden, and the little door which opened into the wood,—he became eagerly excited; and, anxious to proceed with every guarantee of caution, he summoned two other magistrates to the bedside to hear the narrative. We have already seen the event which followed that revelation, and by which the guilt of the murderer was established.
From hour to hour, as the trial proceeded, Frank received tidings from the court-house. The excitement, far from injuring, seemed to rally and re-invigorate him; and although the painful exposure of their domestic circumstances was cautiously slurred over to his ears, it was plain to see the indignant passion with which he heard of Nelly and Kate being dragged before the public eye. It was, indeed, a day of deep and terrible emotion, and when evening came he sank into the heavy sleep of actual exhaustion. While nothing was heard in the sick-room save the long-drawn breathings of the sleeper, the drawing-rooms of the hotel were crowded with the gentry of the neighborhood, all eager to see and welcome the Dalton's home again. If the old were pleased to meet with the veteran Count Stephen, the younger were no less delighted with even such casual glimpses as they caught of Kate, in the few moments she could spare from her brother's bedside. As for Lady Hester, such a torrent of sensations, such a perfect avalanche of emotion, was perfect ecstasy; perhaps not the least agreeable feeling being the assurance that she no longer possessed any right or title to Corrig-O'Neal, and was literally unprovided for in the world.
“One detests things by halves,” said she; “but to be utterly ruined is quite charming.”
The country visitors were not a little surprised at the unfeigned sincerity of her enjoyment, and still more, perhaps, at the warm cordiality of her manner towards them,—she who, till now, had declined all proffers of acquaintanceship, and seemed determined to shun them.