A QUESTION OF LAW. 49*
straw bed on fire, and the oaken sheathing of the room had caught.
When I reached the ground, two hundred men, women, and children
stood massed together, transfixed with horror, and staring at the
grated windows of the jail. Behind the iron bars, and tugging fran-
tically at them, and screaming for help, stood the tramp ; he seemed
like a black object set against a sun, so white and intense was the
light at his back. That marshal could not be found, and he had the
only key. A battering-ram was quickly improvised, and the thunder
of its blows upon, the door had so encouraging a sound that the
spectators broke into wild cheering, and believed the merciful battle
won. But it was not so. The timbers were too strong ; they did
not yield. It was said that the man's death-grip still held fast to
the bars after he was dead ; and that in thisposition the fires wrapped
frim about and consumed him. As to this, I do not know. What
was seen after I recognised the face that was pleading through the
bars was seen by others, not by me.
I saw that face, so situated, every night for a long time afterward;
and I believed myself as guilty of the man's death as if I bad given
him the matches purposely that he might burn himself up with them,
I had not a doubt that I should be hanged if my connection with this
tragedy were found out. The happenings and the impressions of that
time are burnt into my memory, and the study of them entertains
me as much now as they themselves distressed me then* If anybody
spoke of that grisly matter, I was all ears in a moment, and alert to
hear what might be said, for I was always dreading and expecting to
find out that I was suspected $ and so fine and so delicate was the
perception of my gnilty conscience, that it often detected suspicion in
the most purposeless remarks, and in looks, gestures, glances of tb«
eye which had no significance, but which sent me shivering *w*j in
a panic of fright, just the same. And how sick it made me when
somebody dropped, howsoever carelessly and barren of inteat, the
remark that * murder wDl out I' Eor a boy of ten years, I was
carrying a pretty weighty cargo.
All this time I was blessedly forgetting one thing—tfoe &c* that
I was an inveterate talker in my sleep. But one night I awoke suad
found my bed-mate—my younger brother—sitting up in bed and con-
templating me by the light of the moon. I said—
' What is the matter *