BROODING.
Not a syllable of the judge's exhortation was lost upon the prisoner at
the bar. He listened to it as attentively as one who is waiting for the
thunder listens to the muffled menace that precedes it, and the fall of
each big drop of rain. When the words of doom smote upon his ear a
solemn hush succeeded them; and then one piteous, agonized shriek, and a
dull fall in the gallery above.
"This way," said a warder, sharply; and Richard was seized by the arm,
and hurried through the trap-door, and down the stairs, by the way he
had come. It seemed to him like descending into hell itself.
Twenty years' penal servitude! It was almost an eternity of torment!
worse than death! and yet not so. He already beheld himself, at the end
of his term of punishment, setting about the great work which alone was
left him to do on earth--the accomplishment of his revenge. He had
recognized his mother's voice in that agonized wail, and knew that her
iron will had given way; that the weight of this unexpected calamity had
deprived even her elastic and vigorous mind of consciousness--had
crushed out of her, perhaps, even life itself. Better so, thought he, in
his bitterness, if it had; there would then be not a single human
creature left to soften, by her attachment, his heart toward his
fellows--none to counsel moderation, mercy, prudence.
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