We have always been
good friends, but I never knew, till now, how much I loved the lad.'
There were not many in the great city who thought of Barnaby that day,
otherwise than as an actor in a show which was to take place to-morrow.
But if the whole population had had him in their minds, and had wished
his life to be spared, not one among them could have done so with a
purer zeal or greater singleness of heart than the good locksmith.
Barnaby was to die. There was no hope. It is not the least evil
attendant upon the frequent exhibition of this last dread punishment,
of Death, that it hardens the minds of those who deal it out, and makes
them, though they be amiable men in other respects, indifferent to, or
unconscious of, their great responsibility. The word had gone forth that
Barnaby was to die. It went forth, every month, for lighter crimes.
It was a thing so common, that very few were startled by the awful
sentence, or cared to question its propriety. Just then, too, when the
law had been so flagrantly outraged, its dignity must be asserted.
The symbol of its dignity,--stamped upon every page of the criminal
statute-book,--was the gallows; and Barnaby was to die.
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