And now, the sun's first beams came
glancing into the street; and the night's work, which, in its various
stages and in the varied fancies of the lookers-on had taken a hundred
shapes, wore its own proper form--a scaffold, and a gibbet.
As the warmth of the cheerful day began to shed itself upon the scanty
crowd, the murmur of tongues was heard, shutters were thrown open,
and blinds drawn up, and those who had slept in rooms over against the
prison, where places to see the execution were let at high prices, rose
hastily from their beds. In some of the houses, people were busy taking
out the window-sashes for the better accommodation of spectators; in
others, the spectators were already seated, and beguiling the time with
cards, or drink, or jokes among themselves. Some had purchased seats
upon the house-tops, and were already crawling to their stations from
parapet and garret-window. Some were yet bargaining for good places, and
stood in them in a state of indecision: gazing at the slowly-swelling
crowd, and at the workmen as they rested listlessly against the
scaffold--affecting to listen with indifference to the proprietor's
eulogy of the commanding view his house afforded, and the surpassing
cheapness of his terms.
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