I wondered at times how
many years ago it had all begun. I felt what a far stronger and more
single-hearted patriot than I, poor Somerville, says of himself under the
torture of the sergeant's cat, in a passage, whose horrible simplicity and
unconscious pathos have haunted me ever since I read it; how, when only
fifty out of his hundred lashes had fallen on the bleeding back, "_The time
since they began was like a long period of life: I felt as if I had lived
all the time of my real life in torture, and, that the days when existence
had a pleasure, in it were a dream long, long gone by._"
The reader may begin to suspect that I was fast going mad; and I believe I
was. If he has followed my story with a human heart, he may excuse me of
any extreme weakness, if I did at moments totter on the verge of that
abyss.
What saved me, I believe now, was the keen, bright look of love and
confidence which flashed on me from Crossthwaite's glittering eyes, when he
was called forward as a witness to my character. He spoke out like a man,
I hear, that day. But the counsel for the crown tried to silence him
triumphantly, by calling on him to confess himself a Chartist; as if a man
must needs be a liar and a villain because he holds certain opinions about
the franchise! However that was, I heard, the general opinion of the court.
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