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Chapter I.—Condemned to Hang!

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"I shall not have very much to say to you," said Mr. Justice Creighton, as he signalled with a little wave of the right hand to the Chaplain on the Bench beside him to place upon his wig the small square of dark cloth that represents the Black Cap—"for I do not desire to inflict pain upon you. All I shall permit myself to remark is that you are a brute and a blackguard, and will be better dead. The sentence of the Court is that you be taken hence to the place whence you came, and thence to the place of execution on Monday morning next ensuing, and shall there be hanged by the neck until your body be dead—and may the Lord have mercy upon your soul!"

"Ye d——d old goat!" shouted the condemned, as the Newgate turnkeys led him down the steps from the dock. "Ye ——- ould hayayna!"

"Bring back the prisoner," commanded his Lordship, and, when the red-headed young giant once more faced him, the two burly prison warders gripping him apprehensively by the arms as he stood glaring at the Judge, addressed him in icy tones.

"Prisoner, you will be hanged on Monday morning, and I have no doubt but that Almighty God will see to it, in the world to come, that you are fittingly punished for your disrespect to His Most Excellent Majesty the King, whose representative I have the honor to be in this place. I can do nothing further to punish you in this life myself for having called me a goat and a hyena—but I can order that your body be handed over, after execution has been done upon it, to the Royal College of Surgeons for dissection, which it gives me satisfaction now to do. After your demise you will at least be more useful to the community than you were in life, and I doubt not but that many students of the profession of surgery will benefit in knowledge from examination of the dismembered corpse you will leave behind. At all events, whether this pleases you or not, it will mark the disapproval of this Court of those who—ah—liken it to goats and hyenas. Pray remove the prisoner."

"Faith, I don't want to be car-rved like a tur-rkey," growled the large young man as they marched him along the underground corridor leading into Newgate from the adjacent Old Bailey. "What a nasty ould man, for to think o' that same!"

"Well, then, cully," responded the turnkey on his right, "ye should ha' thought o' that afore ye so misnamed his Lordship. Damme, a man must get his own back, somehow! 'Tis all he could do for to get even."

"Ah, well," remarked the prisoner philosophically—"I'm not hanged yet."

"Ye're as good as it, me young blood," cheerfully interposed the custodian on his left. "Jack Ketch'll fix ye, neat an' proper, three marnin's from now. That's all there is to it, me lad. Sure as Gawd made little apples. Come along, now—'tis th' condamned cell this time. An' ye might leave me that there coat an' veskit ye've got on. Ye'll not miss 'em. Plenty o' gents get turned off in their shirt-sleeves in the summer time. Quite comf'orble."

"Faith, thin, if I'm scragged ye can have the clothes, Morrison, for I've met worse than y'silf. But I'm not hanged yet, as I told ye before."

"Monday morning, at ten o'clock sharp, Red-head," laughed the other cheerfully—"at ten sharp be St. Sepulchre's clock," he added, as his colleague unlocked the door of a cell in the condemned ward of the gloomy prison. "This covey gets his customers turned off to th' tick. Knock on th' door if ye want aught—an' keep y'r sperrits up."

This was Friday afternoon, and on the following morning the Chaplain of Newgate prison—they used to call him the "Ordinary" in those days—came to offer spiritual consolation to Mr. Edward O'Shaughnessy, and to prepare his immortal soul for its impending parting with the body to which it had belonged for somewhere about twenty-five years. His visit was not a great success, this being due largely to his native English tactlessness—a disadvantage under which Englishmen have ever labored in their dealings with the Irish.

"You've been a bad man, my poor fellow," said the worthy gentleman, seating himself upon the single stool the cell contained. "Your soul's in great peril—the very greatest—but, with the blessing of Heaven, I hope——"

"Ye're a liar," said Mr. O'Shaughnessy. "An' what's more, ye're a ——- liar! I've not been a bad man, an' what th' divil do ye know about me sowl, I'd like for to know? To Hell out o' this. I don't want ye. Get to blazes."

"Tut, tut, my poor fellow—you are overwrought. You will not deny that you are guilty of the crime of murder for which the law is about to exact retribution."

With a howl of wrath, Mr. O'Shaughnessy took a step forward, shaking his fist in the clergyman's face, and that gentleman seemed to shrink within himself, as he noted with apprehension the almost ungovernable fury which seemed to possess the doomed Irishman. He raised an expostulatory hand, and, calming himself with a great effort, the red-headed young man resumed his leaning posture against the grimy stone wall at the end of the cell farthest from the door.

"'Tis like y'r impart'nince, me black-coated bucko, for you to be a-tellin' me I've done murther. Did you see me a-doin' ut?"

"No, my poor man—of course I didn't. But the jury, after impartial consideration, came to the conclusion that you——"

"Conclusion me gran'mother! Them dozen deludhrers! What did they know about it? Sure, I wasn't near th' spot whare this Misther Larraby was foun' dead wid his head bruk in. A mile, or more, I was away. Listhen, now! This fellie's found croaked on wan side o' Hampstead Heath, an' I'm found walkin' off with a dead goose in me fist on the other. I murthered th' goose, I'm not denyin' of it—but I knew naught o' Larraby. An' yet a fellie I niver seen, an' who niver seen me, ups an' swears he watched me knock th' mahn on th' head an' run away. He seen me red head, he says—th' blashted liar! Ain't there no others wid red hair in London town, I ask ye? But look it here, now—will ye do something for me, Misther Parson? Tisn't much I'm askin' ye for to do? Will ye not do it for a mahn's in wan o' th' wor-rst fixes mortial man cud be? I ask ye' that. Will ye do it?"

"What is it, then, my poor fellow? I promise I'll do anything reasonable that may lie in my power. What do you wish me to do for you? I'll do what I can."

"Will ye go to Lor-rud Crawshaw's house in Bloomsbury Square, an' ask for to see his Lor-rudship? An' whin ye've seen him, will ye tell him from Red O'Shaughnessy th' bad throuble he's in? Will ye tell him he's like for to be scragged o' Monday marnin' if he don't intherfere? Raymind him 'tis th' same Red O'Shaughnessy who stopped Mick Brady from a-shootin' him at Ballyhinchy. Just say that, an' lave th' rist to his Lurrudship. 'Tis th' only chance I've got. Will ye do that for me, Mister Or'nary? Don't be arguin' about whether I killed a mahn or a goose—jest remind Lorrud Crawshaw about Ballyhinchy. 'Tis all I ask of ye. I don't care about me sowl—mebbe I haven't got wan. 'Tis me squeezed neck on Monday mornin' that moa consarns me. I'm not wantin' it squeezed, so I'm not. Will ye go to Bloomsbury Square, an' see his Lorrudship? He's th' close frind o' th' Prince of Wales—th' Prince Regent."

"Yes, I'll try to see Lord Crawshaw on your behalf, my man. But I pray you to place no reliance on a chance of a reprieve. Make yourself ready to meet your Maker, I beg it of you."

"Faith, I'd be glad to mate Him anny time, so I would—but I don't want to be inthroduced to him be Jack Ketch, so I don't. He'd not think much of such an introduction, I'll go bail. Ye'll go, thin?"

The chaplain rose to his feet, and knocked with his stick on the cell door, which was presently opened by the turnkey in the corridor.

"I'll do what I can, O'Shaughnessy. But, pray, do not entertain hopes that may not be realised, and make your peace with Heaven. The time left to you is but short. Do not, I beg it of you, neglect the welfare of your immortal soul. I'll do what I can."

"'Tis me morthal body I'm a-thinkin' of, y'r rev'rince. Well, good luck go wid ye, an' bring it back here. I nade all I can get."

Red O'Shaughnessy had heard no more from the chaplain. When Sunday came, they took him to the church within the prison, where he sat in a square pen, with his coffin beside him, and listened, more or less indifferently, to a sermon preached by some other clergyman who was taking the Ordinary's place. Curious visitors attended the service, who watched the condemned man intently, for any movement, any expression of countenance, that would indicate his state of mind. Morbidly they gloated over him, as he sat in that stall of death with a turnkey by his side. But he gave them little to wonder about, and for all they could see in his demeanor might merely have been one like themselves, come to satisfy a whim.

All through that last night the doomed man was disturbed by one who rang a handbell in the street without the prison, and cried out, in a loud voice what o'clock it was, and how many hours he had yet to exist upon this earth. He asked the turnkey who sat with him what this disturbance meant, and was told that, many years before, some rich merchant of the City of London, who lay buried in St. Sepulchre's Church across Holborn, had left a sum of money for the purpose of feeing a crier who was to commit this outrage throughout the night before anyone in the prison was to suffer public execution. He walked up and down beneath the quarter of Newgate where the condemned were lodged, and chanted his dreadful hymn each time St. Sepulchre's bell tolled out the hour.

And now, with arms bound behind him, Red O'Shaughnessy faced the murmuring crowd that filled the Old Bailey and Newgate streets to overflowing, as he stood upon the scaffold that had been erected in front of the black-walled prison during the night. The hangman lounged beside him, glancing from time to time at the clock in the church tower opposite. The noose of the rope lay loose about his shoulders.

"In th' name o' God, why don't ye do y'r job?" the young man murmured to the executioner. "For God's sake, get it over."

"Three minutes yet, lad," growled the law's last functionary. "I don't hold wi' hurry. 'Tis all for your sake. A respite might come th' werry last minute."

"Do they ever come like that?"

"No—I ain't never seen it 'appen in fifteen year, laddie—but it might. There ain't no knowin'."

Red O'Shaughnessy watched the minute hand of the clock, as imperceptibly it crept towards the hour. He gazed at it, fascinated, as it reached a minute before his death. And then he shut his eyes, and waited for the sudden end of all things. The crowd of spectators was very silent now.

And then, loud and distinct, he heard a cry behind him—the voice of the Governor of Newgate.

"Mr. Sheriff, Mr. Sheriff—for the Lord's sake—HOLD!"

"Well, I'll be d——d," growled the hangman, as he lifted the noose over Red O'Shaughnessy's head. "Here's y'r ——- reprieve, me joker. Go-bless me soul—you're th' werry first as has cheated me like this in all me time as finisher. Blime, y'ought to be ashamed o' y'self."

"Bedad, thin—so I am," murmured Red O'Shaughnessy, feeling a little sick in the stomach. The mob howled like a wild beast.