The impatience manifested during the trial of Halloway
was not a result of any desire of systematic persecution,
but of a sense of wounded dignity. It was a thing unheard
of, and unpardonable in his eyes, for a private soldier
to assert, in his presence, his honour and his
respectability in extenuation, even while admitting the
justice of a specific charge; and when he remarked the
Court listening with that profound attention, which the
peculiar history of the prisoner had excited, he could
not repress the manifestation of his anger. In justice
to him, however, it must be acknowledged that, in causing
the charge, to which the unfortunate man pleaded guilty,
to be framed, he had only acted from the conviction that,
on the two first, there was not sufficient evidence to
condemn one whose crime was as clearly established, to
his judgment, as if he had been an eye-witness of the
treason. It is true, he availed himself of Halloway's
voluntary confession, to effect his condemnation; but
estimating him as a traitor, he felt little delicacy was
necessary to be observed on that score.
Much of the despotic military character of Colonel de
Haldimar had been communicated to his private life; so
much, indeed, that his sons,--both of whom, it has been
seen, were of natures that belied their origin from so
stern a stock,--were kept at nearly as great a distance
from him as any other subordinates of his regiment.
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