All was now confusion: even the grave judge, who had necessarily stopped at that frightful interruption, leaned eagerly over his desk, while barristers and serjeants learned in the law crowded round the prisoner: "He is dying! air, there--air! a glass of water, some one!"
About a thimbleful of water, after fifty spillings, arrived safely in a tumbler; but as for air, no one in that court had breathed any thing but nitrogen for four hours.
He was dying: and three several doctors, hoisted over the heads of an admiring multitude, rushed to his relief with thirsty lancets: apoplexy--oh, of course, apoplexy: and they nodded to each other confidentially.
Yes, he was dying: they might not move him now: he must die in his sins, at that dread season, upon that dread spot. Perjury, robbery, and murder--all had fastened on his soul, and were feeding there like harpies at a Strophadian feast, or vultures ravening on the liver of Prometheus. Guilt, vengeance, death had got hold of him, and rent him, as wild horses tearing him asunder different ways; he lay there gurgling, strangling, gasping, panting: none could help him, none could give him ease; he was going on the dark, dull path in the bottom of that awful valley, where Death's cold shadow overclouds it like a canopy; he was sinking in that deep black water, that must some day drown us all--pray Heaven, with hope to cheer us then, and comfort in the fierce extremity! His eye filmed, his lower jaw relaxed, his head dropped back--he was dying--dying--dying--
On a sudden, he rallied! his blood had rushed back again from head to heart, and all the doctors were deceived--again he battled, and fought, and wrestled, and flung them from him; again he howled, and his eyes glared lightning--mad? Yes, mad--stark mad! quick--quick--we cannot hold him: save yourselves there!
But he only broke away from them to stand up free--then he gave one scream, leaped high into the air, and fell down dead in the dock, with a crimson stream of blood issuing from his mouth.
THUS the crock of gold had gained another victim. Is the curse of its accumulation still unsatisfied? Must more misery be born of that unhallowed store? Shall the poor man's wrongs, and his little ones' cry for bread, and the widows' vain appeal for indulgence in necessity, and the debtor's useless hope for time--more time--and the master's misused bounty, and the murmuring dependants' ever-extorted dues--must the frauds, falsehoods, meannesses, and hardnesses of half a century long, concentrate in that small crock--must these plead still for bloody judgments from on high against all who touch that gold?