“Against.”

“Against what side?”

“The prisoner’s.”

The Judge, whose eyes had gone in the general direction,

recalled them, leaned back in his seat, and looked steadily at the

man whose life was in his hand, as Mr. Attorney-General rose to

spin the rope, grind the axe, and hammer the nails into the

scaffold.

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

Chapter IX

A DISSAPOINTMENT

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jM Attorney-General had to inform the jury, that the

prisoner before them, though young in years, was old in

the treasonable practices which claimed the forfeit of

his life. That this correspondence with the public enemy was not a

correspondence of today, or of yesterday, or even of last year, or of

the year before. That, it was certain the prisoner had, for longer

than that, been in the habit of passing and re-passing between

France and England, on secret business of which he could give no

honest account. That, if it were in the nature of traitorous ways to

thrive (which happily it never was), the real wickedness and guilt

of his business might have remained undiscovered. That

Providence, however, had put it into the heart of a person who

was beyond fear and beyond reproach, to ferret out the nature of

the prisoner’s schemes, and, struck with horror, to disclose them

to his Maesty’s Chief Secretary of State and most honourable