There was a pause in the conversation, broken by Ronald. “I quite agree with you, Warren, in what you have been saying about the mischievous tendency of abolishing capital punishment; mercy to the few (that is, mercy to those whom the law of God adjudges to death for having destroyed the lives of their fellow-creatures) is cruelty to the many, because it, as you have said, takes away the wholesome fear that often deters wicked and unscrupulous men from murders they are moved to commit from covetousness or a desire for revenge.
“But do you not think that beside the evil, of which we have just been speaking, there are others at work in the same direction?”
“Yes; I have in mind two others which are, I presume, the very ones to which you refer. One is the practice by criminal lawyers of delaying or entirely frustrating the execution of the law when they know their client to be guilty; and not only guilty, but unrepentant; taking advantage, for that purpose, of some trivial technicality that has no bearing whatever upon the question of the prisoner’s guilt.
“The higher courts, too, that for like insufficient reasons reverse the righteous decisions of the lower, give encouragement to crime.
“The other evil, working in the same direction, is the mawkish sentimentality of certain weak-minded people, that leads them to make heroes and martyrs of the most depraved and guilty of men, the most heartless and desperate of criminals. Red-handed murderers seem to be their especial favorites, to be visited, feasted upon dainties, loaded with choice flowers, pitied and pleaded for, that they may be spared the due reward of their deeds; perhaps set free to repeat them.”
“I blush for my sex when I hear how some of them pet and pamper the vilest criminals, the most heartless, ruffianly murderers, simply because justice has overtaken them and they are in prison,” remarked Miriam. “They, the silly sentimentalists, seem to lose all remembrance of the pain and misery endured by the wretched victims of the criminals, in weak, not to say wicked, commiseration for the richly deserved pains and penalties the assassins have brought upon themselves.”
CHAPTER XVII.
Belinda Himes was still in hiding in the cave on the river-bank where she had taken refuge at the first. She found it a doleful abode, but scarcely dared venture from it except under cover of the night, when with the owl and the bat she sallied forth from her lair to prowl about the country in search of food. The supply she had taken with her from the raft had long since become exhausted, and she was on the verge of starvation.
Thus pressed by hunger, she visited fields, gardens, and hen-roosts by night, appropriating to her own use such eggs, vegetables, and fruits as she could lay hands upon and carry away—sometimes even going so far as to abstract a young chicken.