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When a New Yorker is sentenced to be hanged, he remains as a cool as cucumber; for the New York law is, that a year must pass between the sentence and the execution. And long before the year passes, the public sympathy has turned in the criminal's favour. Endless petitions go up for his pardon. Of course he gets off. And indeed it is not improbable that he may receive a public testimonial.
Of all unsupported excuses which can match for futility the excuse of mistaken identity? It springs immediate to the criminal's lips. Its mere utterance is almost a conviction. "You persist in error, Major Chantrell," he nevertheless began. "Show him the proof, Bassett," Chantrell interrupted with a shrug of the shoulders, and Captain Bassett drew from his pocket a folded sheet of paper.
He again smiled that lowering smile of his which resembled nothing so much as a hung criminal's death-grin, and returned the jewelled signet to his breast. "Afterwards! ... yes.. afterwards!" he said in emphatic yet mock solemn tones.. "Even so!"
It was the work of the boy's hideous father, who, not contented with training up his son to a life of crime, was anxious that he should also carry upon his person, through life, that fearful representation of a criminal's doom. 'Would it not be a deed of mercy, thought our hero 'to take the poor boy from his unnatural parents, and train him up to a life of honesty and virtue?
The young man was tried and convicted of the crime; but either the circumstantial nature of the evidence, and possibly some lurking doubts in the breast of the executive, or, lastly an argument of greater weight in a republic than it could have been under a monarchy, the high respectability and political influence of the criminal's connections, had availed to mitigate his doom from death to perpetual imprisonment.
For a whole week, since the criminal's appeal had been rejected by the Supreme Court, Monsieur de Granville had been worrying himself over the case, and postponing from day to day the order for carrying out the sentence, so anxious was he to reassure the jury by announcing that on the threshold of death the accused had confessed the crime.
They argued that 'men don't do such things. That sentiment is the criminal's best protection." We passed into the zone of another army and a hillier country, where the border villages lay more sheltered. Here and there a town and the fields round it gave us a glimpse of the furious industry with which France makes and handles material and troops.
His course in and towards the Netherlands has been sufficiently examined. Not a single charge has been made lightly, but only after careful sifting of evidence. Moreover they are all sustained mainly from the criminal's own lips.
Come morning, I'll be past hurting any one, more." The childlike pathos in this criminal's voice and attitude confused the listener. For the life of her she could not deal with the situation in any ordinary fashion; it seemed like a dramatic incident bungled by amateurs. Presently she asked gently: "Are you sure she is dead, Mr. Morley?" The unreality held Martin, too.
On the table in the bank lay a copy of the New York Herald. His stern face paled as he gazed upon the flaring head-lines. But the audacious criminal's hand never trembled as he read the four columns which blazoned the discovery of Clayton's body. Fast as the devil drives he hastened back to his secret lair.
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