Half a dozen long
strides--the wretched ruffian, staggering across the field with his booty,
was caught up.--The clear blade gleamed in the air--and then a fearful
yell--and after that I recollect nothing.
* * * * *
Slowly I recovered my consciousness. I was lying on a truckle-bed--stone
walls and a grated window! A man stood over me with a large bunch of
keys in his hand. He had been wrapping my head with wet towels. I knew,
instinctively, where I was.
"Well, young man," said he, in a not unkindly tone--"and a nice job you've
made of it! Do you know where you are?".
"Yes," answered I, quietly; "in D * * * * gaol."
"Exactly so!"
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE TRIAL.
The day was come--quickly, thank Heaven; and I stood at the bar, with four
or five miserable, haggard labourers, to take my trial for sedition, riot,
and arson.
I had passed the intervening weeks half stupified with the despair of
utter disappointment; disappointment at myself and my own loss of
self-possession, which had caused all my misfortune,--perhaps, too, and the
thought was dreadful, that of my wretched fellow-sufferers:--disappointment
with the labourers, with The Cause; and when the thought came over me, in
addition, that I was irreparably disgraced in the eyes of my late patrons,
parted for ever from Lillian by my own folly, I laid down my head and
longed to die.
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