Cross was denied.

It sheared off heads so many, that it, and the ground it most

polluted, were a rotten red. It was taken to pieces, like a toy-puzzle

for a young Devil, and was put together again when the occasion

wanted it. It hushed the eloquent, struck down the powerful,

abolished the beautiful and good. Twenty-two friends of high

public mark, twenty-one living and one dead, it had lopped the

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

heads off, in one morning, in as many minutes. The name of the

strong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chief

functionary who worked it; but, so armed, he was stronger than

his namesake, and blinder, and tore away the gates of God’s own

Temple every day.

Among these terrors, and the brood belonging to them, the

Doctor walked with a steady head; confident in his power,

cautiously persistent in his end, never doubting that he would

have Lucie’s husband at last. Yet the current of the time swept by,

so strong and deep, and carried the time away so fiercely, that

Charles had lain in prison one year and three months when the

Doctor was thus steady and confident. So much more wicked and

distracted had the Revolution grown in that December month,

that the rivers of the South were encumbered with the bodies of

the violently drowned by night, and prisoners were shot in lines

and squares un