He raised the cap which was to shut out the world forever from the wretched being by his side. But before it rested on the head for which it was intended, he who held it seemed to have a purpose to fulfil. He leaned quickly forward, whispered in that passive ear, and for a single instant raised his mask. Eyes of fire glared from under it. It was Antonio once more. What he said no mortal knows; but if ages of burning malignity and pent passion can be distilled into one word, that word, no doubt, was in the prisoner’s ear. He started and looked up, and a shudder passed over his frame. Then, in one instant, all his apathy was gone, and he struggled like a madman to free his hands. The Spaniard saw his error, and strove to retrieve it. But the frantic exertions of the prisoner foiled him.
Eagleton himself could be passive no longer. He had seen it all, and felt that the sudden change that had passed upon Ellis was not the mere change of fear grown riotous at the last. He seized the stranger, tore off his mask, and called for aid. Quicker than thought the executioner drew a pistol from his breast and fired it. The prisoner fell upon the scaffold. He then quietly surrendered himself. As the sheriff, until now transfixed by the scene, approached and drew from the hand of his strange deputy the weapon just used, he started at its resemblance to the one which had been produced at the trial, the peculiar marks of which were strongly impressed upon his memory.
The intervention of those who could act with authority was procured. There was clearly a plot against the prisoner’s life, in which the strange witness was the first actor, and the executioner the second. Humanity rode down the sharp points of legal form. The scaffold was soon cleared. The multitude retired. The gallows fell beneath axe and hammer; and the only evidence of that stirring scene was the grass trampled by the eager crowd.
My friend next day visited Antonio in his cell. He asked after his victim, and being told that the wound was mortal, and that he was dying, made a full confession. He had escaped from his prison;—he had been the murderer;—the witness was his tool;—he had gone upon the scaffold to finish his revenge, and to glut his passion with the agonies of a frightful death. It was singular, but for some reason best known to himself, he left Eagleton in ignorance of the cause of his malice, and of the crime at ——.
Ellis did not die. His wound was thought to be mortal—it was only severe. He recovered, but his mind was dead, and Eagleton took him to his own home, harmless and passive as a new-born child.
They are all gone now—the brother, the sister, and her idiot husband. The green sod has grown for years over their graves, and I tell their story in the full conviction that no heart will be wounded, and no delicacy hurt by a recital of facts which to me are full of interest.
LADY JANE GREY.
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BY MRS. E. J. EAMES.