grave interest; and stood with his hands resting on the slab of

wood before him, so composedly, that they had not displaced a leaf

of the herbs with which it was strewn. The court was all bestrewn

with herbs and sprinkled with vinegar, as a precaution against

gaol air and gaol fever.

Over the prisoner’s head there was a mirror, to throw the light

down upon him. Crowds of the wicked and the wretched had been

reflected in it, and had passed from its surface and this earth’s

together. Haunted in a most ghastly manner that abominable

place would have been, if the glass could ever have rendered back

its reflections, as the ocean is one day to give up its dead. Some

passing thought of the infamy and disgrace for which it had been

reserved, may have struck the prisoner’s mind. Be that as it may, a

change in his position making him conscious of a bar of light

across his face, he looked up; and when he saw the glass his face

flushed, and his right hand pushed the herbs away.

It happened that the action turned his face to that side of the

court which was on his left. About on a level with his eyes, there

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

sat, in that corner of the Judge’s bench, two persons upon whom

his look immediately rested; so immediately, and so much to the

changing of his aspect, that all the eyes that were turned upon

him,