We must now for a time leave Henry Beauchamp and the Earl of
Ashborough, and turn to the small, neat country town of ----, in the
jail of which place, Harding, Smithson, and Sarah Ings, were at length
safely lodged, within a few days after Beauchamp's return to his
native country. Walter Harrison, skillfully treated and carefully
attended, was soon able to undertake the journey to England; and as
the fixed determination he had shown to further the ends of justice,
at all risks, left no doubt of his sincerity, he was permitted
to act without restraint, and proceeded steadily toward his
destination--indeed more rapidly than his feeble state properly
admitted. Presenting himself uncalled before the magistrates of the
town, he informed them at once of his name, required them to receive
his voluntary confession, and in consequence, to commit him to prison.
The first part of his demand was of course acceded to; but it was
intimated to him that, in consequence of his firm and determined
conduct, throughout at least the latter part of the dark business in
which he had unfortunately been engaged, he would not be deprived of
his liberty.
To the surprise of the magistrates, however, he replied that he knew
nothing of their forms and manner of proceeding in these matters, but
that he had made up his mind to the line of conduct he was to pursue.
On no consideration whatever, he said, would he be king's evidence--a
term for which he seemed to entertain the most extraordinary aversion.
His confession, he said, was clear and ample, made without any
promises of pardon or favor, demanded or given; he would therefore go
to prison like the others, and be brought to trial like them; but as
he was guilty, he would plead guilty in regard to the robbery, though
not in regard to the murder. This, he said, was his firm
determination, though he would be found ready at any time to give
every sort of information that might be required to make out the case
against his accomplices and himself.
As the jail delivery was to be held in a few days, the penance of
imprisonment which he thus imposed upon himself was not great; but
even the short period of confinement to which he thus voluntarily
subjected himself seemed greatly to affect his health and spirits. In
vain the governor of the prison, under the idea that apprehensions in
regard to his ultimate fate were preying upon his mind, assured him
that the king's pardon, promised by proclamation to any but the actual
murderers, secured him from all danger. He replied, that he feared
nothing but his own thoughts; for that, since he had come back to the
country and the county in which the terrible crime wherein he had
participated had been perpetrated, a heavy cloud had seemed to come
over him, which he could not shake off. His bold, daring, and
impetuous manner was now all gone, and in its place there appeared a
deep, silent sternness, somewhat impatient of contradiction, but
determined rather than violent. The great loss of blood he had
sustained had rendered him as pale as ashes, and anxiety and suffering
had bowed his powerful frame, and left him merely the shadow of what
he formerly was. Some apprehensions, indeed, appeared to be
entertained by those who watched, lest he should become so ill as to
be unable to undergo the business of the trial; but in this they were
deceived; and his strength, on the contrary, appeared greater, and his
energies more alive, on the day before that appointed for the assizes.
At length the day arrived, and all the usual formalities having taken
place, the heavy list of crimes was adverted to, and lamented by the
judge; the grand jury was exhorted and sworn, and proceeded to its
functions. As every one expected, the first bill brought before them,
which was that against Captain William Delaware, for the murder of Mr.
Tims, at Ryebury, was at once thrown out. Not so, however, that
against Harding and his accomplices, which, being found a true bill,
was immediately proceeded on.
All our readers are most probably acquainted with the solemn array of
a court of justice, though an interesting, always a painful scene. On
the present occasion, of course, from the blackness of the crime
committed, and the many extraordinary circumstances that accompanied
and followed it, the excitement produced was great, and the court
crowded in every part. The preliminaries having been gone through, the
four prisoners were put to the bar, and a good deal of confusion
ensued, from the endeavor of the various spectators to obtain a full
view of the accused--the class of women who frequent criminal courts
struggling forward to see the culprits with more than masculine
boldness.
Harding, who was beyond doubt a handsome man, first advanced to the
bar. He was dressed with scrupulous care; and, with his neck wrapped
in a thick black cravat, his double-breasted waistcoat buttoned up to
his chin, and his dark frock-coat thrown back from his chest, he
looked very much like the private secretary of a German prince. His
cool and tranquil air, and easy carriage, might have been construed
into the expression of conscious innocence, but for a slight, very
slight sneer, that curled the corner of his lip, entirely different
from the indignant expansion of the nostril with which innocence
sometimes meets a false accusation. He gazed for a single instant
round the court, and then withdrew his eyes, while all the reporters
scribbled rapidly in their note-books, preparing to make him a
newspaper wonder, and hand him down to posterity as one of the heroes
of the gallows. The next that came up was the well-known Tony
Smithson, who, though he had confronted more than one court of justice
on previous occasions, now, from the magnitude of the offense, and the
certainty that his conviction would follow, had lost all self-command,
and approached the bar pale, trembling, and agitated. Next approached
Sarah Ings, with the most persevering of all human passions, vanity,
still uppermost. Dressed forth in all the gay and vulgar smartness of
the Rue de Vivienne and the Palais Royal, with a touch or two of rouge
upon her cheeks to hide the ravages of apprehension, she presented
herself before the court that was to try her, and the judge who might
have to doom her to death, with a simpering and coquetish smile,
thinking fully as much of the impression of her charms and her finery
upon the spectators, as of her awful situation and its probable
result.
Last appeared Walter Harrison, with a bold, firm step, a bright red
spot on each of his pale cheeks, and his eye sparkling from feverish
excitement. He leaned his hand upon the bar, and after gazing rapidly
and boldly round the court, fixed his eyes upon the clerk of the
arraigns, as he proceeded to read the indictment.
That document was conceived in the usual tenor, and comprised all the
various acts which the prisoners could or might have committed in the
perpetration of their crime, with all the legal terms and expressions
necessary to prevent dubiety.
Harding listened to every word with scrupulous attention; and it was
observed that at several of the counts in the indictment, which
described the act that he had committed with much greater precision
than he had expected, he set his teeth hard. On the question being put
to each of the prisoners--"How say you, guilty or not guilty?"--the
three first pleaded "not guilty," and what is termed put themselves
upon their country, or, in fact, appealed to a jury. Walter Harrison,
however, in a bold, firm voice, replied, at once, "Guilty of the
robbery, but not guilty of the murder;" and consequently it was found
necessary to proceed on his trial also, upon several of the counts in
the indictment.
The trial then went on; and as the reader is already aware of the
greater part of the evidence that could be brought forward, it shall
be but briefly recapitulated here. The footprints on the floor of the
room where the murder had been committed, and the mark of the hand on
the wall, were proved to correspond exactly with the feet of Harding
and Smithson, and with the hand of the latter. The marks in the
passage were also proved to have been caused by the feet of the young
sailor; and evidence was given that Harding had paid the master of a
cutter, hired to carry them to France, with one of the notes which
could be traced to the possession of the miser of Ryebury a few days
before his death. The _ci-devant_ smuggler, Billy Small, swore
positively to the persons of Harding, Smithson, Harrison, and the
woman, and detailed fully the particulars of their arrival at his
house, with a gentleman whose ankle was dislocated, and who had
evidently received a severe contusion on the forehead. The Bow-street
officers proved the state of the prisoners' apartments in Paris, the
considerable sums of money there found, and a variety of minor facts,
which all aggravated the suspicions against them; and as the principal
witness, Henry Beauchamp was at length called, in order to establish
the fact of the prisoners having been on the very night of the murder
at the house of Mr. Tims, and having thence proceeded direct to the
cottage of the smuggler. As he entered the witness-box, the cheek of
Harding turned a shade paler, but at the same time his eye flashed
with an expression rather of rage than fear. As his former master went
on, however, he recovered his composure, and listened calmly, while
Beauchamp clearly and distinctly detailed all the events, from his
second visit to Mr. Tims's house, on the night of the murder, till he
was delivered over to the care of the old smuggler and his family.
Throughout the trial, Harding had acted as his own counsel, and now he
proceeded with an air of cool, determined effrontery, to cross-examine
his former master, mingling skillfully those questions which might
tend to exculpate himself with those which he thought would annoy the
witness.
"Allow me me to ask you, Mr. Beauchamp," he said, "whether, while I
was in your service, you ever detected me in any act of dishonesty!"
"To speak but candidly," replied Beauchamp "I never did."
"Did I not on more than one occasion," proceeded Harding, "when your
tradesmen endeavored to cheat or over-charge you, point out to you the
fact?"
"You certainly did," replied his former master.
"So far, then, your evidence is favorable to me," continued the
culprit. "Now pray tell me Mr. Beauchamp, what was your own errand at
the house of Mr. Tims on the night in question--or rather, what became
of you between the first and second calls which you made at his
dwelling during that evening?" and he fixed his eye upon the witness's
countenance with a degree of sneering triumph at the pain he imagined
the question would cause him. But Beauchamp answered with the utmost
coolness.
"I do not know," he said, "that any law would oblige me to reply to a
demand which does not seem to bear upon the case; but, nevertheless, I
have not the slightest objection to do so. I had, on the first visit I
paid to the unhappy man who was afterward murdered, received from him
the sum of twenty-five thousand pounds, which I had promised to
advance on mortgage on the estate of my cousin, Sir Sidney Delaware.
From the house of Mr. Tims I went straight to Emberton Park; and
having discovered that Captain Delaware was absent from home, I took
the liberty, as a relation and intimate friend, of entering his room,
and leaving the money, enveloped in a packet, upon his dressing-table,
purposing to give him intimation of the fact next morning."
"Was not that rather a hazardous action, sir?" demanded Harding, with
cool insolence; "especially when there were so many thieves abroad?"
"Not more so, it would seem," replied Beauchamp, "than to carry it in
my pocket from Ryebury to Emberton when you were in my neighborhood;
but luckily it happened that you neither knew the one fact nor the
other."
Harding was silent for a moment, finding that sarcasms were edged
tools, which he had better not employ against Beauchamp, who had full
strength to turn them back upon himself, with that sort of cold
calmness which made them a thousand times more stinging. The pause was
so long, that Beauchamp at length asked, "Have you any other questions
to put to me?"
"Yes--several!" replied the prisoner. "Several. Why did you not give
the money into the hands of Sir Sidney Delaware himself, when you
found that his son was absent?"
"Because it was not my pleasure to do so," replied Beauchamp. "I must
submit to the court, whether these questions are relevant."
The judge at once supported the witness's objection; and the prisoner
being told that he must absolutely confine himself to the matter
before the court, proceeded. "Pray, Mr. Beauchamp, was the moon
shining at the time of your return to Ryebury?"
"It was shining brightly," replied Beauchamp.
"Then it was by the light of the moon that you recognized me among the
persons coming out of the miser's house?" demanded the prisoner.
"I did not say that I recognized you in the slightest degree," replied
his former master, "till I found myself in the boat upon the water."
"Then you positively did riot recognize me at all at the miser's
house!" said Harding, with a smile of triumph.
"I did not," answered Beauchamp; "as I said before, all I saw, on the
opening of the door, were the forms of three men and a woman standing
in the passage. As the moon was not shining directly on that side of
the house, I could not distinguish their features so perfectly as to
swear to any one of them; but the foremost of the men was exactly of
your height and appearance, and I have already sworn, that I saw you
in the boat after I recovered my recollection."
"Pray what space of time do you think had elapsed," Harding next
demanded, "between the time of your return to Ryebury and your finding
yourself in the boat!"
Beauchamp replied, that of course he could not exactly tell, but he
imagined that it must have been more than an hour.
"If such was the case," said the prisoner, "then the moon, which you
say was shining on the western side of the miser's house when you
reached the door, must have set before you recovered your senses; and
I should like to know how, without any light on a dark night, and with
your thoughts confused, as they must have been, after such a blow as
you describe, you could recognize me so as to swear to my identity,
when, by your own account, you could not stand up in the boat even for
a moment!"
"In the first place," answered Beauchamp, "the moon had not set,
though she was setting, and her very position at the moment I did
attempt to rise, showed me your features more distinctly than if she
had been higher in the sky; for she shone at that moment under your
hat. I was confused, certainly, and in that confusion I had very
nearly called you by your name; but luckily I recollected in time the
attack made upon my own person, and the extraordinary circumstances in
which I was placed, or probably the consequences might have been fatal
to me also."
"He should not have touched a hair of your head!" said Walter Harrison
aloud, and the eyes of the whole court were instantly turned upon him;
but the young man paused, and looked toward Harding, adding--"I do not
want to interrupt him! Let him say his say, and then I will say mine."
Harding had turned very pale; but he added eagerly--"One more
question, sir, and I have done. Was this momentary and imperfect
glance which you obtained of the countenance of one of the men in the
boat with you, all which led you to believe that I was that person?"
"Although that glance would have been quite sufficient to satisfy me,"
replied Beauchamp; "what I had learned from that glance was confirmed
by the sound of your voice, and by the fact of your having dropped
this powder-flask out of your pocket upon the beach, when embarking
for France; which powder-flask, you must well remember my giving to
you some days before, because it did not measure the right charge for
my guns."
"I never saw it before in my life," replied Harding, solemnly, and
then ceased his interrogatories. The jury had listened to this
cross-examination more attentively than to any other part of the
evidence, and it was clear that the cool and collected manner in which
the prisoner had sifted the testimony of his former master, had
produced no small effect on several of the jurors. When Harding
ceased, Walter Harrison turned to Beauchamp, and the eyes, not only of
the whole spectators, but of his fellow-prisoners, were fixed upon
him.
"Mr. Beauchamp," he said, "I am not going to do what they call
cross-examine you, because I am sure you will tell the truth like a
gentleman. But once, when we were talking about catching these
fellows, you told me as much as that you had overheard what I said on
that bad night to old Billy Small--will you have the goodness to let
those gentleman up there know what it all was!"
Beauchamp detailed the whole; and having suffered a brief
cross-examination on the part of the other prisoners, he was allowed
to retire. The evidence now given, together with the declaration of
Walter Harrison, closed the case for the crown, and the prisoners
entered on their defense. Smithson, who knew too well the proceedings
of a court of justice to believe that he could mend his condition by
his own oratory, declined saying any thing, except that he was
innocent; to which he added all those ordinary but vehement
asseverations, which render the bar of a court of justice an altar to
impiety, whence falsehood and blasphemy reek continually up in the
sight of Heaven. The woman appeared strongly inclined to speak in her
own defense, but her words were drowned in an hysterical burst of
sobbing; and Harding, with the young sailor, were left to address the
court for themselves.
The speech of the first was as consummate a piece of special pleading
as ever was drawn up in ancient or modern days. On the evidence
against himself he commented with the utmost acuteness, and pointed
out that there was no direct proof that he had ever been in the house
of the unhappy man who had been murdered, except that afforded by the
declaration of the young man, Walter Harrison, whose acknowledgment of
participation in the crime, and evident desire to escape the
punishment, by laying the whole of it upon other people, he trusted
that the jury would remember and consider before they attached any
weight to his testimony. Mr. Beauchamp, he continued, had never seen
him in the house, or near the house. At least, though he threw out a
suspicion, yet he had not attempted to swear that he had beheld him
there; and although William Small--an acknowledged smuggler--had
declared that he came to his cottage in the boat with Mr. Beauchamp
and the rest, yet he did not state whether he was there as a voluntary
agent or as under compulsion. In regard to the footmarks in the house,
he argued, that they could not be held as proving any thing; for, in
the number of men who might be supposed to commit such a crime as
that, how many would be found with a foot of nearly the same size as
his! Had his clothes been found bloody! he asked. Had any of the
implements of robbery and housebreaking been found upon him! No! And
the whole case against him, he contended, rested alone upon the very
doubtful testimony of the young sailor, and the fact of his having
paid the freight of the cutter with a note which had been in the
possession of Mr. Tims.
He now paused for a moment; and, after having taken breath, and eyed
the jury to see what effect his oratory had produced, he went on, in a
solemn and serious manner:--"Gentlemen of the jury--having now
commented upon the evidence against me, and stripped it of all those
magnifying circumstances with which human malice is ever too prone to
swell the charge against a person once suspected--having shown upon
how slender a foundation rests the case in respect to myself--I will
proceed to explain to you fully and honestly every circumstance that
appears at all doubtful in my conduct, trusting that the confession of
some errors which I deeply regret, will not prejudice you against me
in the consideration of the present accusation. When I came down to
Emberton with Mr. Beauchamp--against whom I do not pretend to say a
word, although he was somewhat imaginative in his ways of acting and
thinking--I had frequent occasion to go on his business to the house
of the unhappy man who has been so cruelly murdered; and where I was
always received with a degree of kindness, which certainly would never
have prompted the base return which I am accused of having made. I
there became acquainted with the young woman at the bar; an attachment
grew up between us; And having--upon some speculative principles of
general utility, which I now acknowledge to have been foolish and
wrong--taken up a prejudice against marriage, I obtained her promise
to elope with me without any ceremony of the church. In one service or
another I had amassed a considerable sum, and her wages also were long
in arrear. She with difficulty obtained payment from her master; and
it was determined that we should go off together. Our plans, however,
were hurried by Mr. Beauchamp's sudden departure from Emberton; and
hearing, that there was a French vessel on the coast, we resolved to
set off that ill-starred night. Just as I was about to proceed to
Ryebury to meet her at the appointed hour, I found her in the streets
of Emberton, whither she had been sent by her master to Lawyer
Johnstone's for some stamps, and we were returning to Ryebury in order
to procure her clothes, when we met three men dragging along Mr.
Beauchamp, apparently dead. I did not well know what to do; and, in a
scuffle with the men, I was of course overpowered. They treated me
humanely, however, I must say, and told me that they neither wished to
hurt me nor the gentleman they had got; and if I chose to go quietly
along with them till they were safe in France, whither they were
going, they would then set me at liberty; but they vowed, with many
imprecations, that they would not leave any one behind who could give
information against them. I learned from this that they had committed
some crime; but the impossibility of resistance, the desire of getting
to France, and the hope of doing some good to my master, all induced
me to yield quietly; and I accordingly got into the boat with them,
and we went off. By the time we had reached the smuggler's cottage,
however, I had learned enough to show me the horrid crime that had
been committed; and, before I had been there a quarter of an hour,
this young man beside me, whom I have reason to believe was the
principal actor in the Ryebury tragedy, whispered to me that I was in
for it, as he termed it, and that, fair weather or foul, I must sail
out the voyage with him and his companions. I asked him what he meant,
and he then showed me, that if I went back to London, or peached, as
he called it, I should certainly be suspected as accessory to what had
happened. I was overcome with the horror of my situation; and, on my
remonstrating and begging him to allow me to depart, he threatened, if
I said another word, to make it out so that I should appear the
principal in the murder. My courage and my resolution failed; and,
weakly consenting to go with them, I suffered myself to be led on
blindly, and do what they liked. The freight of the ship even I was
compelled to pay, which I did with a pound note that Sarah there had
received from her poor master the night before, and had given me to
keep. After our arrival in France, I gave myself up to despair; my
hopes and prospects seemed utterly ruined, and, to keep away thought,
I gambled deeply. Fortune, however, favored me, and I won large sums.
Suddenly the news that Bow-street officers were pursuing us in Paris,
added new anxieties to my mind, and often I thought to give myself up
and tell all I knew. The apprehension that I would do so, it seems,
induced the other prisoner beside me, to be beforehand with me; and,
on the night that I was taken, when I heard his voice without, and saw
Mr. Beauchamp enter the room, I certainly made a desperate defense,
having no hope of being able to establish my innocence against the
conspiracy that was evidently got up to make me the scapegoat. This,
gentlemen, is the plain, straightforward story of what really
happened. You must all see that I have had no time to make up such a
tale, as I knew not what evidence would be produced against me. There
stands the only witness I could bring forward to prove the truth of my
story; but she, included in the same false charge, is prevented from
giving evidence in my favor."
"It is all true!--it is all true!" cried the unhappy girl, weeping
bitterly; and Harding proceeded--"I have little more to add,
gentlemen. Mr. Beauchamp's evidence is generally correct, though he
was mistaken in one or two particulars; but I trust that you will
allow the good character that he has himself given me, to
counterbalance the assertions that he has erroneously made. In
conclusion, I have only to say, that my very heart and soul revolts at
the thought of the crime with which I am charged; and although I have
been culpable in some things, let me trust that my sins have been
sufficiently punished already by their consequences, and that a jury
of my countrymen will not incur the awful responsibility of condemning
an innocent man for a crime that never entered his thoughts."
With a fine person and graceful action, Harding delivered this address
with so much effect, that a murmur of approbation filled the court
when he concluded; and it was evident that the opinion of the jury was
strongly affected by what he had said.
The gentlemen of the bar, however, whispered together with a
significant smile, and one then remarked to another--"He brought in
the girl devilish neatly. The fellow must have some good in him for
that."
"Poo!" replied the more experienced counsel to whom he spoke. "He
could not have made up his own story without it."
The judge now repressed the noise in the court, and the young sailor
came nearer to the bar to address the jury.
"Gentlemen," he said, "I can't make you a fine speech like this man,
Harding, who, I begin to think, is the devil himself; for none but the
father of lies could have got up such a string of them, do ye see! I
told the whole truth in my declaration before the magistrates; and as
you all know well enough, if what he has said were true, and I had
wanted to betray him to screen myself, I might have been king's
evidence, as the folks wanted me. My lord the judge knows that, and
every one else; and so I should have saved my life to a certainty, and
pocketed the reward. No--no! I had no such thought in my head, do you
see; and now, gentlemen, I will tell you truly how it all happened. It
makes little odds to me whether you hang me or not; for I shall not
live three months if you don't; and death is just as bitter to-morrow
as to-day--though I never feared him much, somehow. The thing is this,
gentlemen:--I have a poor mother, a widow, living at Emberton; and to
see her next to starving always has been a sore heart to me. Well,
there were only three people in all the world that ever were very kind
to me. The first was my mother, who forgave me all my faults, and
loved me notwithstanding all the sorrows I brought her. The next was
Captain William Delaware, who, when I got into a scrape about
poaching, and might have been sent to the hulks, took me aboard his
own ship, treated me as kindly as possible, and sent me back with a
better character than ever I had before. The next was Mr. Henry
Beauchamp--though I always took his name to be Burrel. He saved my
life at the risk of his own; had me doctored and tended; was kind to
me and my mother; gave me advice and encouragement, which would have
been a blessing if I had remembered it, and promised me help if I
behaved well. But I did not behave well; for that cursed villain, his
servant, Harding there, did me more harm than all his master could say
did me good. He was always at me about what he called the unequal
distribution of property; and it was very natural to get from thinking
that other folks had no right to their property, to thinking that one
should take it from them the best way one could; and so it turned out.
I have told all about the robbery in my declaration: but I never could
tell, gentlemen, what a turn it gave me, when I found they had
murdered the old man. Ay, when first they came down, with their hands
all bloody: I shall never forget it, sleeping or waking. However, that
I got over, though it was always like a red-hot coal lying at my
heart; but then I thought that sometime it would go out of my head;
till one day I went into a shop in Paris to sell some of the things
for them that they had stolen, when they set fire to the lady's house
upon the hill, and there I took up an English newspaper, and I saw all
about the murder. That was bad enough; but when I found out that a set
of rogues and fools had laid the blame of what we had done upon the
noblest gentleman in all the country, who would not not hurt a fly, if
it were not when he is alongside of an enemy--when I saw that, and
thought how it would break his gallant heart, and that of his good
father, and poor Miss Blanche's too, and remembered what Captain
Delaware had done for me, and what his father and Miss Blanche had
done for my poor mother--why, gentlemen, I thought I should have gone
mad. Well, I believe I was mad; till, as good luck would have it, I
found out Mr. Beauchamp, and told him all about it, and offered, if he
would not take odds against the two fellows, but would go with me and
face them singly--I offered, I say, to give them up, and myself too.
Well, he told me of the king's proclamation, and promise of pardon,
and all that; but I told him I would be tried too, like the rest; and
away we went, and took them, though I got shot in the shoulder, and
Mr. Beauchamp in the face. Now, gentlemen, you all know that I was
left behind in Paris, and came over here of my own accord, and gave
myself up without any one telling me; and so you may believe the rest
of my story or not, as you like. All I want is to clear Captain
Delaware; for he is a noble gentleman, and a good officer, and a
kind-hearted man--God bless him forever!"
Harding had been really eloquent; for from the adaptation of his story
to the evidence produced immediately before, it was beyond doubt that
he had poured forth his long address upon the spur of the occasion.
Walter Harrison, however, was not eloquent; and, if there had been any
thing like eloquence in his speech, it was the eloquence of passionate
sincerity. Still his tale produced the deep impression; Harding's
alone the transient one. In the case of the latter, the jury and the
spectators had felt that the account was plausible, and might be true;
but when Walter Harrison concluded his rough oration, there was not a
man in all the court that doubted his assertions. There was a
momentary pause, and then more than one person murmured, "Poor
fellow!"
At length the judge summed up the evidence, with that clear,
straightforward, noble impartiality, that dignified and equitable
firmness, which is so universally characteristic of an English judge.
He noticed Harding's defense, and gave him the full credit of every
probability that existed in favor of the story he had told, but he
noticed also the singular conduct of Walter Harrison, pointed out the
minute resemblance between the declaration he had made in Paris, and
that which he had made in England, and the harmony of the whole of it
with both his conduct toward Beauchamp and the conversation he had
held with the smuggler. Nevertheless, he said, there was a peculiar
feature in the case which greatly affected it, and he begged the jury
to give the prisoners the advantage of any doubt that might thence
arise in their minds. This peculiar feature was, that Walter Harrison
having refused to become king's evidence, the prisoners had not had an
opportunity of cross-examine him, as they might have done any other
witness. At the same time, his declaration could not fail to have a
considerable effect upon the minds of the jury in regard to the other
prisoners, as well as to himself, and therefore it was to be received
cautiously, from the peculiarity adverted to.
The judge's exposition of the law, and his classification of the
evidence adduced, was clear, judicious, and impartial; and, on
dismissing the jury to deliberate, he called upon them to cast away
from their minds the remembrance of every thing but what they had
heard in that court, and never to forget, that the duty they were then
called upon to perform, involved the most awful responsibility which
it is possible for a human being to undertake.
The eyes of each of the prisoners were fixed upon the jury-box while
the judge addressed the jurors; and it was remarked, that at one
particular point of the summing up, where the declaration of the young
sailor, and his conduct throughout the whole transaction, were clearly
stated, Harding turned extremely pale, and, casting down his eyes,
remained in deep thought.
In a very few minutes the jury re-appeared in court, and the foreman
announced their verdict of guilty against Smithson, Harding, and his
paramour; not guilty in regard to the young sailor, except on the
count referring to the robbery.
As the fatal words rang in her ear, the unhappy woman dropped down on
the floor of the dock, as if she had been shot. Smithson alone
muttered a few words in his peculiar slang, consigning the judge and
jury to the place for which his own deeds qualified him much better.
Harding remained profoundly silent, and heard not only the
announcement of his condemnation, but the awful sentence that followed
it, with a calm but steadfast composure.
While sentence of death was passing on Harding, Smithson, and Sarah
Ings, the head of a woman, dressed in deep mourning, pale, haggard,
and agitated, but with the traces of former beauty shining through
all, was seen gazing eagerly upon the judge; till at length he turned
to Walter Harrison, and informed him that, at the suggestion of the
king's counsel on the occasion; his sentence should be reserved for
farther consideration. At those words a passionate flood of tears were
seen to burst from the poor woman's eyes, which had been dry as the
desert before; and she hurried eagerly from the court ere the crowd
made their way toward the door.