“How say you, gentlemen of the jury?  Guilty, or not guilty?”

“GUILTY.”

It was a silence to be felt; and the prisoner gasped once or twice convulsively.

“But,” said the foreman, “we wish to recommend him to mercy.”

“On what grounds?” inquired the judge.

“Because, my lord, we believe it was not a crime planned by the prisoner beforehand, but arose out of the bad passions of the moment, and was so committed.”

The judge paused, and drew something black from the receptacle of his pocket, buried deep in his robes.

“Prisoner at the bar!  Have you anything to urge why sentence of death should not be passed upon you?”

The prisoner clutched the front of the dock.  He threw up his head, as if shaking off the dread fear which had oppressed him, and the marble of his face changed to scarlet.

“Only this, my lord.  The jury, in giving their reason for recommending me to your lordship’s mercy, have adopted the right view of the case as it actually occurred.  The man Hallijohn’s life was taken by me, it will be useless for me to deny, in the face of the evidence given this day, but it was not taken in malice.  When I quitted the girl, Afy, and went to the cottage for my hat, I no more contemplated injuring mortal man than I contemplate it at this moment.  He was there, the father, and in the dispute that ensued the catastrophe occurred.  My lord, it was not wilful murder.”

The prisoner ceased, and the judge, the black cap on his head, crossed his hands one upon the other.

“Prisoner at the bar.  You have been convicted by clear and undoubted evidence of the crime of wilful murder.  The jury have pronounced you guilty; and in their verdict I entirely coincide.  That you took the life of that ill-fated and unoffending man, there is no doubt; you have, yourself, confessed it.  It was a foul, a barbarous, a wicked act.  I care not for what may have been the particular circumstances attending it; he may have provoked you by words; but no provocation of that nature could justify your drawing the gun upon him.  Your counsel urged that you were a gentleman, a member of the British aristocracy, and therefore deserved consideration.  I confess that I was much surprised to hear such a doctrine fall from his lips.  In my opinion, you being what you are, your position in life makes your crime the worse, and I have always maintained that when a man possessed of advantages falls into sin, he deserves less consideration than does one who is poor, simple, and uneducated.  Certain portions of the evidence given to-day (and I do not now allude to the actual crime) tell very greatly against you, and I am sure not one in the court but must have turned from them with abhorrence.  You were pursuing the daughter of this man with no honorable purpose—­and in this point your conduct contrasts badly with the avowal of Richard Hare, equally a gentleman with yourself.